Google News Updates

A promotion to make Topeka a test site for a new, ultrafast Internet service is gathering speed.

Google Inc. announced plans earlier to build and test new high-speed broadband networks in one or more places around the country. The company says the organization of fiber-optic cables would deliver Internet connections 100 times quicker than most systems now available.

Over the past week, Topeka city officials have announced they're finishing Google's request for information from potential trial communities. The City Council has indicated that it's behind the effort.

And a group called "Think Big Topeka" is campaigning to put together community and government support.

Google has given communities a March 26 deadline to submit the finished requests for information.

Location has become a significant part of the way we search. If you're a foodie looking for restaurant details, food blogs or the closest farmer's market, location can be vital to serving you find the right information. Starting today, we've added the capability to refine your searches with the "Nearby" tool in the Search Options panel. One of the actually helpful things about this tool is that it works geographically — not just with keywords — so you don't have to worry about adding "Minneapolis" to your query and lost webpages that only say "St. Paul" or "Twin Cities." Check it out by doing a search, clicking on "show options" and selecting "Nearby."

You can decide to see results nearby either your default location or a custom location, and you can narrow down to results at the city, region or state level.

Yahoo has joined with Twitter to make its search engine results more "real-time" in an agreement which sees the microblogging service become integrated across its complete product suite.

The partnership is alike to earlier deals Twitter has signed with Google and Microsoft's Bing.

Yahoo's search engine has previously started indexing tweets in a bid to make its service offer faster and more appropriate results - a move made by Google at the end of last year.

However, what is dissimilar to the previous deals is that Yahoo has effectively made itself a Twitter client, as Yahoo users will be able to tweet from multiple platforms across Yahoo's products.

It is unidentified how this will be carried out at this stage. There is an opportunity it could happen via widgets.

The partnership also allows Yahoo users to access their Twitter feed via the company's email service, its homepage and via its satisfied verticals - such as Yahoo Finance.

Google had lastly integrated MySpace updates from public pages into its real-time search feature, which was launched back in December at the Google Search Event in Mountain View, California. Google had initially announced that public updates from both MySpace and Facebook would be integrated into the service. Though up until now, Facebook was nowhere to be seen.

With that said, Google had announced in a tweet [pictured above] that status updates from public Facebook Pages are now part of real-time search results. Most Facebook Pages are for celebrities, events, brands, politicians, etc. and there are only about 3 million of them. That means that Google will not be utilizing public updates from the more than 400 million Facebook users.

Another thing worth mentioning is that Facebook is not charging either Google or Bing for using the position updates from its Facebook users and pages, unlike Twitter, which supposedly is making a little cash from partnerships with all the major search engines.

An example of a screenshot of the updates from Facebook Pages on Google Real-Time Search results below.

Google has announced the “next generation of ad serving technology for online publishers” with its upgrades to the Double-click online advertising system, known merely as DoubleClick for Publishers (DFP).

In essence the upgrade combines the existing DoubleClick display advertising model with enhanced Google-optimised algorithms and analytics which will maximise DoubleClick ad performance online and allow users to track the development of adverts more easily.
To put it basically, the search engine has finally come around to properly integrating DoubleClick into the Google family. Since Google acquired DoubleClick in March 2008, the service has remained basically unchanged – a bolt-on to the seemingly inexhaustible list of Google products; now DoubleClick has been “Googlefied” to mesh the product into the Google brand.

The new features of DFP comprise a brand new interface which has been changed to make it more intuitive, user-friendly and to reduce errors. Customers will have contact to more detailed reporting and analytics as well as future forecasting to measure the efficiency of current online advertising campaigns and to make the most of future campaigns.

Google has upgraded the DoubleClick algorithm to optimise ad performance and application as well as making opening up the API which will permit developers to add their own apps and modifications to the system.

The DFP will come in two separate packages, one for large online publishers and social media networks, and one for increasing publishers and small businesses. The version for small businesses will be free to download, the full DFP will have to be paid for by the superior publishers.

Google Docs is the web-based tool that has become the organizational center of the classrooms. No longer there is lost assignment problems with development of Google Docs.

Docs also teaches directorial skills. Students form folders to keep up with assignments. The most significant folder is the folder students share with the teacher. All graded writing goes into this folder, and it serves as a characters portfolio for the semester. You do not have to hunt student work; it is organized in a student folder. At the end of the day, you can leave with just a laptop, no papers to lug around.

Each student folder is in a group class folder. The class folder contains each student's writing for the semester:

Each student's online writing portfolio folder is also mutual with his or her parents. Parents can even remark on student work and participate in the revision and editing process.

For students, Google Docs is a priceless tool in the writing process. Students do not need a flash drive to bring drafts to and from home. Also, students can share inscription with peer editors. After peer restriction, students move their final draft into their English 9 folder. As the final editor, you can leave comments to assist the student in revising his or her final draft. It is satisfying to browse through the revision history and see that a student is considering each comment as they revise: Yea! They are actually reading what I wrote! Usually, students do not read teacher comments that are hand written on paper, but it seems to work in Google Docs.

Google Voice is about giving you more power over your communications, through dozens of features ranging from call screening to voicemail transcription to the facility to send and receive SMS by email.

Users love the Google’s growing list of features, and they are conscious of the fact that Google Voice can seem overwhelming to people trying it for the first time.

So Google has created a short video that gives an overview of what Google Voice can do.

In addition, Google has created a set of short videos that dive into more detail about ten features of Google Voice:

1) Voicemail transcription
2) One number
3) Personalized greetings
4) International calling
5) SMS to email
6) Share voicemails
7) Block callers
8) Screen callers
9) Mobile app
10) Conference calls

The videos show the reasons for the invention of the feature and basic instructions for getting started. And each video focuses on just one topic so you can learn about the features that matter to you.

Finally, Google has just launched the own YouTube channel at youtube.com/googlevoice. You can view all of the videos mentioned above in a custom video gadget that Google has built for this channel, which will help you keep track of which videos you've already watched.

Imagine being in a foreign country staring at a restaurant menu you can't comprehend, a waiter with annoyance tapping his foot at your tableside. You, a vegetarian, have no suggestion whether you're about to order spaghetti with meatballs or veggie pesto. What would you do? Well, ultimately you might be able to take out your mobile phone, snap a photo with Google Goggles, and instantly view that menu translated into your language.

Yesterday at the Mobile World Congress Google demonstrated a prototype of Google Goggles that has the power to do just that. It's still in a very early stage, this is a demo given by Google to shows just how powerful a smartphone can be when it's connected to the translation technologies. For more information and to watch the demo, check out the brand-new Google Translate blog.

Google has launched a couple of improvements to the way saving works in all of Google Docs. Now it's much simpler to tell, at a glance, when documents need to be saved, when documents are busy saving, and when documents have been saved into the cloud:

A clickable save button means your document has edits which haven't been saved so far and the timestamp lets you know when it was last saved. You can either wait for autosave to kick in after a few seconds, or you can yourself save at any time using the keyboard (ctrl S on PC, cmd S on Macs), save button, or by going to through the file menu.

A disabled button reading “Saving” means your document is at present being saved, and should complete in a second or two.

A disabled button reading “Saved” means that all data in this document is now saved, and the timestamp tells you when the last change happened. You can securely exit the application or continue editing the document.

These changes are now available in presentations and documents and will be coming to spreadsheets soon.

When you need an answer to a very precise question, sometimes the information just isn't online in one straightforward place. For example, let's say you want to know if there's snow on Skyline Boulevard on a given day or the finest time of year to plant beans in the Bay Area. You might find weather reports and planting guides on numerous different sites, but for these kinds of questions, a person with the right proficiency can be a lot more useful than a webpage.

Google is excited to announce that they have acquired Aardvark, a unique technology company that lets you quickly and easily tap into the knowledge and experience of your friends and extended network of contacts. Aardvark analyzes questions to determine what they're about and then matches each question to people with pertinent knowledge and interests to give you an answer quickly.

Google is very impressed with the Aardvark team and the technology they've worked hard to build, and they are looking forward to collaborating to see where we can take it. You can learn more about Aardvark's underlying knowledge and premise by reading this paper recently co-authored by founder Damon Horowitz.

In the meantime, Aardvark is accessible today in Google Labs, so try it out.

As thousands of Mac fans and developers gather in San Francisco for this week's Macworld conference, Google is particularly delighted to announce a new beta release of Chrome for Mac. The release includes some of the Google’s most requested features from the Mac community, including extensions and bookmark sync.

You can read more about these features on the Google Chrome blog, or you can try it out straight by downloading the Google Chrome Beta for Mac. If you're already using Chrome, you should be mechanically updated to the new beta within the next day.

Variety of content is one of the great things about YouTube. But some of you want a more restricted experience. That's why Google has announced Safety Mode, an opt-in setting that helps screen out potentially objectionable content that you may prefer not to see or don't want others in your family to stumble across while enjoying YouTube. An example of this type of content might be a newsworthy video that contains realistic violence such as a political protest or war coverage. While no filter is 100% perfect, Safety Mode is another step in Google’s ongoing desire to give you greater control over the content you see on the site.

It's easy to choose in to Safety Mode: Just click on the link at the bottom of any video page. You can even lock your option on that browser with your YouTube password. To learn more, check out the video below.

And remember, ALL content must still comply with Google’s Community Guidelines. Safety Mode isn't fool proof, but it provides a greater degree of control over your YouTube knowledge. Safety Mode is continuing out to all users throughout the day, watch for the new link at the bottom of any YouTube page.

Google Buzz is a latest way to start conversations about the things you find interesting. It's built right into Gmail, so you don't have to peck out a completely new set of friends from scratch — it just works. If you think about it, there's always been a big social network underlying Gmail. Buzz brings this network to the surface by mechanically setting you up to follow the people you email and chat with the most. Google has focused on building an easy-to-use sharing experience that richly integrates photos, videos and links, and makes it easy to share openly or privately (so you don't have to use different tools to share with different audiences). Plus, Buzz integrates firmly with your existing Gmail inbox, so you're sure to see the stuff that matters most as it happens in real time.

Google is rolling out Buzz to all Gmail accounts over the next few days, so if you don't see it in your account yet, check back soon. They have also planned to make Google Buzz available to businesses and schools using Google Apps, with added features for sharing within organizations.

On your phone, Google Buzz is much more than just a diminutive screen version of the desktop experience. Mobile devices add a significant component to sharing: location. Posts tagged with physical information have an extra dimension of context — the answer to the question "where were you when you shared this?" can communicate so much. And when viewed in aggregate, the posts about a particular location can paint a tremendously rich picture of that place. Check out the Mobile Blog for more information about all of the ways to use Buzz on your phone, from a new mobile web app to a Buzz layer in Google Maps for mobile.

Google is making Buzz a fully open and distributed platform for conversations. And building on a suite of open protocols to create a complete read/write developer API and you can join on Google Code to see what is available today and to learn more about how to participate.

If you want to learn more, visit buzz.google.com.

Google already runs a flourishing online translator, Google Translate, but they’ve got far-loftier ideas than merely converting the written word. They want to decode languages spoken over the phone, according to their head of translation services.

Presently, Google’s text translation service covers 52 languages, together with the addition of Haitian Creole last week. Google has developed its text translation examine by crawling and comparing millions of multi-lingual websites and documents. It then uses this translation data to offer text and website translation to users of this translation service.

On the mobile side of its business, Google has released a voice search scheme for Android’s 2.x version. Users can speak into a handset mic and Google’s voice search system will identify the spoken words and perform a search. For the live voice translation service which Google’s Franz Och is developing, this voice search method and Google’s text translation service would be combined to instantly translate spoken voice.

As of yet, no dates or technical details have been revealed about the coming of Google’s live voice translation service. This technology would be a greeting addition to Android or any mobile phone service, as our continually globalizing economy may yield a larger need for voice translation.

As hinted by CEO Eric Schmidt, Google launched a Super Bowl ad Sunday. The ad tells the story of a romance as helped by a series of Google searches which begin with a (presumably) young man looking for leads how to study abroad in Paris and ending with instructions on how to assemble a crib.

John Battelle more or less ran down Google’s intentions Saturday after Schmidt tipped his hand on Twitter. But it was an unanticipated move by the search giant which has eschewed advertising even as competitors Microsoft and Yahoo have spent 10s of millions of dollars to compete with the company that retains a search market share that exceeds 70 percent.

Google has reinvented online advertising but has done no brand advertising itself. Google’s goal was simply to make a series of short online videos about their products and their users, and how they interact. But they liked this video so much, and it's had such a positive reaction on YouTube, that so they decided to share it with a wider audience.

Google has announced their third annual Doodle 4 Google contest in the U.S. Google doodles, created have helped to celebrate events and anniversaries from Van Gogh's birthday to Valentine's Day. And since 2008, Doodle 4 Google has given K-12 kids the chance to create their own logo and have it displayed on the Google homepage for hundreds of millions of users to enjoy for a day.

In adding to the winner's art appearing on Google.com on May 27, 2010, they'll also receive a $15,000 college scholarship, a laptop computer and a $25,000 technology grant for their school.

This year's theme is "If I Could Do Anything, I Would..." and it's all about approaching the limits, dreaming big, and seeing what you can accomplish in life.

For more inspiration, you can see last year's winner, Christin Engelberth, a sixth grader at Bernard Harris Middle School in San Antonio, Texas. She titled her doodle "A New Beginning" to communicate her wish that "out of the current crisis, discoveries will be found to help the Earth prosper once more."

Google has also assembled a panel of well-known "Expert Jurors," including creative directors, cartoonists and famous animators ranging from Sesame Workshop to Pixar Animation Studios. The Expert Jurors will help to narrow down the cream of the crop to 40 regional finalists, who will come to the Google office in New York City on May 26, 2010. For the second year, Google will also be partnering with the Smithsonian's Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum, where the top 40 regional finalists will get to have their artwork displayed in a national exhibit. And for the first time this year, Google has planned out to give eight Technology Booster awards to schools that submit maximum number of doodles per school by March 10th and have students in our 400 State Finalists.

Visit the official competition website for a full listing of all contest rules and requirements. Only students from registered schools can enter, so be definite that your school is registered by March 17, 2010. All doodles must be submitted by March 31, 2010.

Google made a small advancement to its Google Voice service this week, and will now allow users to send text messages to multiple recipients.

Formerly, you had to copy and paste your message into a new form for every text, but now you can just enter the names or phone numbers separated by commas and send it all at once. To prevent spam, however, there is a maximum of five recipients per message.

Replies from each recipient will be threaded into separate conversations, so you can keep trail of them in your Google Voice inbox.

The attribute is also available via the Google Chrome extension and will soon be added to the mobile app.

A couple of months back, google launched the Custom Sections Directory feature in Google News to allow users to set up sections on topics of their interest, and to share them with other users.