News Quotes About Google 2008

Introduction

This page contains some news quotes about Google for year 2008.

Contents

Google Analytics Data Sharing

Benchmarking now available plus additional opt-in settings
March 5, 2008
"We're happy to announce the launch of two related new Google
Analytics features: a beta version of industry benchmarking and a
data-sharing settings page. Both are designed to give our customers
more choice and better control over their data. We are also launching
an integration with Audio Ads today, which we'll discuss in more
detail in tomorrow's post. All of these features will begin appearing
in customer accounts today, though benchmarking reports may take up to
a couple weeks to show data."
http://analytics.blogspot.com/2008/03/benchmarking-now-available-plus.html

Google Analytics Benchmarking Feature, Data Sharing & Audio Ad
Charting
March 5, 2008
"Google Analytics has added three major features today, two of those
features are related and the third is a standalone feature. Google
Analytics users can now have the option of comparing their site's data
to industry benchmarks. Analytics users can opt-in or opt-out of the
data sharing feature by logging into their Google Analytics console.
The third new feature is the ability to see when your Google Audio ads
run, in relation to your web site traffic."
http://searchengineland.com/080305-120002.php

Google Analytics Data Sharing
March 6, 2008
"Site stats program Google Analytics offers a new opt-in data sharing
setting. Log-in and you’ll see a message dialog, and somewhere below
it a link reading “Edit Account and Data Sharing Settings”. That link
takes you to the settings page (see screenshot), where you can agree
to share your traffic data..."
"“With Google products only”: Google says this will enable advanced
advertisement services and improvements with other Google products. As
an example use case, Google says you would be able to use an enhanced
version of the AdWords conversion optimizer, once available."
"“Anonymously with Google products and the benchmarking service”: When
you check this option, Google say they will enable benchmarking* by
sharing your data in anonymous form and improve services. All your
traffic data will be non-site identifiable, and combined with other
anonymous sites which are aggregated. Here, a use-case is to gain a
broader context to understand where your site is placed in terms of
traffic from related sites."
"Not sharing your data with other Google products at all is also an
option. If you do decide to opt-in, data from up to a month before
will be shared; opting out will stop data-sharing on that day,
according to Google."
http://blogoscoped.com/archive/2008-03-06-n80.html

Google Analytics data sharing options FAQ
"What does data sharing mean?"
"You can decide if you want to share your Google Analytics data with
Google, and also have full control over how you share it with us.
Visit the Edit Account and Data Sharing Settings page from within your
account to opt in to sharing your data "With Google products only" or
"Anonymously with Google products and the benchmarking service.""
"What will Google do with my data?"
"Shared data will be used to improve the services we provide you and
will help create more powerful features for you to choose from. As
they become available, only those who share their data with Google
will gain access to these services and features. For example, the
upcoming release of industry benchmarking and an enhanced version of
AdWords Conversion Optimizer will offer greater insight and
flexibility to the customers who have opted to share their data."
"What does it mean to share my Google Analytics data anonymously with
Google and the benchmarking service?"
"If you only choose the anonymous data sharing option, Google will
remove all identifiable information about your website, then combine
that data with hundreds of other anonymous sites in comparable
industries and report them in an aggregate form. Google will use this
anonymous data to improve the products and services we provide you and
enable benchmarking in your account."
http://www.google.com/support/googleanalytics/bin/answer.py?answer=87515

Google Analytics
http://www.google.com/analytics/

Google Android SDK Has Multiple Vulnerabilities

Google Android SDK Hits Security Speed Bump
March 4, 2008
"Researchers find ways to exploit outdated and vulnerable open-source
image processing libraries in the Google Android software development
kit."
"Google's Android software development kit is using several outdated
and vulnerable open-source image processing libraries, according to an
alert from Core Security, a company that specializes in penetration-
testing software."
"In an advisory released Mar. 4, Core Security identified several
exploitable heap overflows and integer overflows haunting Android,
Google's software stack for mobile devices that includes an operating
system, middleware and key applications."
"In all, Core Security lists eight different vulnerabilities
identified in the Android SDK, which is currently in beta."
"In a Vendor Statement section of the advisory, the Google-backed Open
Handset Alliance says there will be many changes and updates to the
platform before Android is ready for users. These changes are expected
to include  full security review."
http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Security/Google-Android-SDK-Hits-Security-Speed-Bump/

Research firm: Google Android SDK has multiple vulnerabilities
March 4, 2008
"Google’s Android SDK is facing multiple vulnerabilities that are
remotely exploitable, according to Core Security Technologies."
"In an advisory, Core Security noted heap and interflow overflow
issues with Android and reserved eight CVE identifiers."
"Core noted:"
"Several vulnerabilities have been found in Android’s core libraries
for processing graphic content in some of the most used image formats
(PNG, GIF an BMP). While some of these vulnerabilities stem from the
use of outdated and vulnerable open source image processing libraries
other were introduced by native Android code that use them or that
implements new functionality."
"Exploitation of these vulnerabilities to yield complete control of a
phone running the Android platform has been proved possible using the
emulator included in the SDK, which emulates phone running the Android
platform on an ARM microprocessor."
"However, Android is a work in progress so fixes for these
vulnerabilities are likely to be implemented."
http://blogs.zdnet.com/security/?p=921

Google Android
http://code.google.com/android/

Google Calendar Sync

Google Calendar Sync
"Google Calendar Sync allows you to sync events between Google
Calendar and Microsoft Outlook Calendar. You'll be able to determine
the direction of information flow, as well as the sync frequency."
http://www.google.com/support/calendar/bin/answer.py?answer=89955

What's new with Google Calendar
"Sync your Google Calendar with your Microsoft Outlook calendar"
"Access your calendar however and whenever you want. Check your
Microsoft Outlook events on the go with Google Calendar. View your
Google Calendar information offline through Microsoft Outlook
calendar."
http://www.google.com/googlecalendar/new.html

Google Connects San Francisco Homeless

Google connects San Francisco homeless
March 3, 2008
"Google has announced plans to give every homeless person in San
Francisco a phone number and a voicemail account that they can check
from any phone in the city."
"The scheme has been set up using the infrastructure from Grand
Central, a telecoms routing firm Google acquired last year. Over 4,000
voice mailboxes have been set up for the purpose."
""We are firm believers in the power of technology to improve the
daily lives of individuals and communities as a whole," said Craig
Walker, a senior product manager of voice products for Google."
""Access to phone and voicemail services is one way that Google can
help San Francisco's homeless stay connected with family, friends,
social workers, health care providers and potential employers.""
"The scheme is being promoted in homeless shelters around the city as
part of Mayor Gavin Newsom's Project Homeless Connect."
""Providing phone and messaging capabilities is an extraordinary step
forward in the city's commitment to addressing the needs of this
vulnerable community," said Newsom."
"The scheme will let homeless people access voicemails by typing a
special code into any phone and will let them record a greeting for
callers."
http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/2211011/google-gives-homeless-free

Google Hands Out Voicemail To S.F. Homeless
February 28, 2008
"San Francisco's homeless may lack a permanent address, but some of
them are getting free lifelong phone numbers and voice mail, courtesy
of Google's Grand Central telephony service and Mayor Gavin Newsom's
Project Homeless Connect (PHC)."
"Newsom launched the social program on Thursday at the Bill Graham
Civic Auditorium in San Francisco, along with a California Pacific
Medical Center initiative to provide homeless women with mammograms."
""Providing phone and messaging capabilities and access to vital
health care is an extraordinary step forward in the city's commitment
to a comprehensive approach to addressing the needs of this vulnerable
community," Newsom said in a statement. "Housing our homelessness
residents remains my top priority, and providing these services will
certainly improve their quality of life and empower this community to
be more self-sufficient.""
http://www.informationweek.com/industries/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=206900885

Google offers free voicemail, phone number to ALL SF homeless
February 28, 2008
"Google said today it is giving a free lifetime phone number and voice
mail to every single homeless person in San Francisco who wants one."
"The effort, which part of Project Homeless Connect, will enable a
homeless person to check his or her messages from any phone."
"Examples of this could be calling in for messages from prospective
employers, or even checking in with their families."
"One homeless man interviewed by San Francisco’s KNTV-TV said:”"
"“Having your family, friends and loved ones being able to say ‘here
I’m thinking about you, I love you, I want you to know you’re mine,
and I miss you,’ can have a monumental change in one’s behavior.”"
http://blogs.zdnet.com/ip-telephony/?p=3331

Google Contacts Data API

Google Contacts API. Own Your Data Across Networks
March 5, 2008
"In case you’re one of the many that are uncomfortable handing out
your Google username and password to networks that would like to aid
you in the friend invitation process by importing your Gmail contact
list, Google now has a better solution for you. Google has finally
released the Contacts Data API, which benefits both individual users
and developers."
"The Contacts API allows individuals to own their own contact data,
use it in any manner they see fit, and import it and export it at
will. Several of these benefits spill over to developers, who can now
enable users to import and export data, and access their contacts
lists without having to give you the personal information of username
and password. The Contacts API lets the contacts list be shared across
most of the major Google apps, including Reader and Calendar to name a
few."
http://mashable.com/2008/03/05/google-contacts-api/

Introducing the Google Contacts Data API
March 5, 2008
"A common contact list has helped power applications like Gmail,
Google Reader, and Google Calendar. And now, with the launch of the
Google Contacts Data API, we're opening up this contact list to your
applications as well."
"Based on AtomPub, the Contacts API can be used to safely read,
create, edit, and delete contact information stored with Google, all
while keeping users' passwords private via delegated authentication
and authorization. Learn the details from Sebastian Kanthak in his
announcement post on the Google Data APIs blog, and join the
conversation on the Contacts API Group."
http://google-code-updates.blogspot.com/2008/03/introducing-google-contacts-data-api.html

Google Contacts API Released
March 6, 2008
"Google just released a Contacts API as part of their existing GData
feeds framework. Google says with this API, your app can get a list of
a user’s contacts, edit and delete info in existing contacts, and
search in an existing contact. Contacts are shared among Google apps
like Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Reader and more. As one use-case,
Google says this API allows web developers to import a user’s Google
contacts into their apps, as well as export their app’s contacts into
Google."
http://blogoscoped.com/archive/2008-03-06-n31.html

Google Releases an API for Contacts
March 5, 2008
"Google wants to make everyone happy today. After releasing a calendar
sync tool, Google makes it possible to sync other valuable data: your
contacts. The new Contacts Data API "allows client applications to
view and update Contacts content in the form of Google Data API feeds.
Your client application can request a list of a user's contacts, edit
or delete content in an existing contact, and query the content in an
existing contact.""
"What's interesting is that the contacts are tied to a Google Account,
not necessarily to a Gmail account, so Google could release a separate
address book for those who don't use Gmail."
http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2008/03/google-releases-api-for-contacts.html

Google Contacts Data API
http://code.google.com/apis/contacts/

Google Code
http://code.google.com/

Google Desktop 5.5

Desktop: More gadgets, more languages
March 5, 2008
"Desktop's last beta release made the beautiful gadgets in our Desktop
gallery available for use in iGoogle. Today Google Desktop 5.5 goes
out of beta and makes that same functionality available to 31 more
languages, now including Thai and Indonesian."
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/03/desktop-more-gadgets-more-languages.html

Google Desktop
http://desktop.google.com/

Google Groups Grapples With Porn Spam

Google Groups Grapples With Porn Spam
March 4, 2008
"Over the weekend, pornographic images and videos began appearing on
Google Groups pages, along with infectious malware."
""These pages push other porn pages for profit," said Alex Eckelberry,
CEO of security company Sunbelt Software, in a blog post. "While not
all of the redirects go to malware sites, we did observe some
redirects to a site which ultimately pushes a fake codec trojan, which
if installed, results in a VirusHeat infection.""
http://www.informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=206901462

Smut peddlers and spammers invade Google Groups
March 3, 2008
"Porn peddlers and spammers are upping their assault on Google Groups.
Many links on the discussion group site link to porn aggregators, some
of which redirect to malware sites pushing Trojan horse malware (such
as VirusHeat) disguised as video codecs."
"Anti-spyware firm Sunbelt Software has identified more than 270
Google Groups pages linked to hard core porn which are growing "like
cockroaches", the security firm reports."
"Sunbelt has warned Google of the presence of the smutty links and of
pointers towards spam blogs promoting anything from "female celebrity
smoking" to air conditioners. Many of these sites push searches to
MCtop10.info."
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/03/03/google_groups_crud/

Google Sites

Google Sites: No SharePoint Killer, But That's Not the Point
March 5, 2008
"So Google has launched a product called Google Sites to compete with
Microsoft's SharePoint. Even at first glance it is no SharePoint
killer and is (as is normal for Google) more of a Beta product then
anything that shows real maturity."
"The real discussion we need to be having is whether these tools are
the "productivity" applications they claim to be. Both Google and
Microsoft have the means and depth to produce impressive tools, but
just because something is usable and quick to deploy does not mean
that by definition it is a good thing, particularly when it comes to
managing confidential information."
"I'll argue that Google Sites primarily represents a toolset to easily
build small Web sites — in particular departmental or collaborative
team sites. As with all Google products it has been made usable by
simplifying the features and interfaces (in the main a good thing). It
has also been bundled with other Google Apps such as Gmail and Docs —
though quite why, and how well or logically these bundlings work
remains open to question. Hence it is clearly positioned as a
SharePoint alternative."
http://www.intelligententerprise.com/blog/archives/2008/03/google_sites_no.html

Google Sites Launched
February 28, 2008
"Google released Google Sites, allowing you or a whole team to build
websites with documents, photos, presentations and more. This new
service, which was spawned from the Google-acquired JotSpot suite,
just works with a Google Apps account, though."
"If you don’t have a Google Apps account, try signing up for one. If
you have one, log-in to your domain management dashboard and click the
“Add more services” link, where you can then add Sites."
http://blogoscoped.com/archive/2008-02-28-n65.html

Bringing it all together
February 28, 2008
"people are working together in teams more often, with larger groups,
and with others who may be in different parts of the country or the
world. We are shifting our focus from personal to team productivity.
It's less about "you" and more about "us.""
"But with this explosion in collaboration, how do you bring together
everything your team needs to work? How do you take information,
whether it is on your desktop or online, and share it with specific
groups of people -- your team, the company, the public?"
"Meet Google Sites, the newest addition to the Google Apps product
suite. It was designed to allow you to easily create a network of
sites and share them with whomever you choose. Google Sites lets you
pull together information from across Google Apps by embedding
documents, spreadsheets, presentations, videos, and calendars in your
sites. Of course, we also harness the power of Google search
technology so your search results are always fast and relevant."
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/02/bringing-it-all-together.html

Google Sites Launched
February 28, 2008
"After more than a year since the JotSpot acquisition, Google finally
launched a service that uses JotSpot's technology: Google Sites. The
new service is a part of Google Apps and allows you to create web
sites collaboratively. "People can work together on a Site to add file
attachments, information from other Google applications (like Google
Docs, Google Calendar, YouTube and Picasa), and new free-form content.
Creating a site together is as easy as editing a document, and you
always control who has access, whether it's just yourself, your team,
or your whole organization," explains Google."
"Google offers templates, a rich-text editor, 10GB of storage for each
Google Apps account and integration with other Google services so you
can embed gadgets, calendars, spreadsheets, presentations, photo
slideshows and videos. You can invite people to collaborate or just
view a site and you can also publish the site so that anyone can view
it."
http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2008/02/google-sites-launched.html

What is Sites?
"Google Sites is an online application available through Google Apps
that makes creating a team web site as easy as editing a document.
With Google Sites, people can quickly gather a variety of information
in one place -- including videos, calendars, presentations,
attachments, and text -- and easily share it for viewing or editing
with a small group, their entire organization, or the world. Get
started with Google Sites at http://sites.google.com. Key product
features:"
"Customize your site's interface to resemble your group or project's
look and feel"
"Create a new sub-page with the click of a button"
"Choose from a growing list of page types: webpage, announcements,
file cabinet"
"Centralize shared information: Embed rich content (video, Google Docs
documents, spreadsheets, presentations, Picasa photo slide shows,
iGoogle gadgets) into any page, and upload file attachments"
"Manage permissions settings to keep your site as private or widely
editable and viewable as you'd like"
"Search across your Google Sites content with Google search
technology"
http://www.google.com/support/sites/bin/answer.py?answer=90447&topic=14062

Google Sites
"Google Sites, a new offering from Google Apps, makes creating a team
site as easy as editing a document. Use Google Sites to centralize all
types of information -- from videos to presentations -- and share your
site with just a few people, your entire organization, or the world."
http://sites.google.com/

Google Summer of Code 2008

Google Summer of Code
"Google Summer of Code 2008 is on! Over the past three years, the
program has brought together over 1500 students and 2000 mentors from
90 countries worldwide, all for the love of code. We look forward to
welcoming more new contributors and projects this year. We are now
accepting applications from open source projects who would like to act
as mentoring organizations for 2008, and will be accepting these
applications through March 12, 2008. We will begin accepting student
applications on Monday, March 24th."
http://code.google.com/soc/2008/

Summer of Code is back!
March 3, 2008
"Google Summer of Code, our program to introduce students to open
source software development is coming back. In the past three years,
we've seen more than 1500 students 'graduate' from this program,
working with 2000+ mentors across 90 countries to produce millions of
lines of code. We're pleased to have funded more than $10M in open
source development through Summer of Code, and we've increased our
funding for it this year by another $1M."
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/03/summer-of-code-is-back.html

Google Summer of Code 2008 FAQ
http://code.google.com/soc/2008/faqs.html

Google Talk Chatback Badge

Google Talk chatback
February 25, 2008
"Do you have a blog, online profile, or some other personal web page?
Would you like to communicate more with your visitors? Today we're
launching a new Google Talk feature that lets visitors to your web
site chat with you. We call it "chatback" because instead of you doing
all the talking on your blog, your visitors can talk back to you.
Sure, they could leave comments, but those are public and hard to use
for a real conversation. With chatback, it's a real instant message
session."
"To use chatback, you must have a Google Talk account ... but your
visitors don't have to! They don't even need to have an email address,
or to have ever used instant messaging."
"When they visit your site, they'll see a badge like the one on the
right showing your online status (available, busy, offline) and, if
you're available, they can just click and start chatting. Chatback
uses the web-based Google Talk Gadget so your visitors don't need to
download anything. It opens in a new window so they can keep chatting
with you even if they browse to other pages."
http://googletalk.blogspot.com/2008/02/google-talk-chatback.html

Google Talk Chatback Widget
February 26, 2008
"Google released a new "chatback badge" allowing your site's visitors
to chat with you, provided you're logged in to Google Talk at the
time. All you need to do is copy & paste a snippet into your site. You
can change the title of the badge, also toggle whether you want your
status message to show, and adjust your nickname as displayed to
guests. (Note that someone can even launch a chatback when they're not
logged in to their Google account; the webmaster who included the
gadget will just see them as "Guest.")"
http://blogoscoped.com/archive/2008-02-26-n90.html

What's a Google Talk chatback badge and how do I create one?
"A Google Talk chatback badge allows others to chat with you even if
they haven't signed up for Google Talk or a Google Account. You can
put the badge in your blog or website, and people who visit those
pages can chat with you. The badge will display your online status
(whether you're available to chat or not) and, optionally, your status
message."
"You need to be a Google Talk user to create a badge, and you'll need
to be online and available (with a green ball next to your name) in
Google Talk to enable people to chat with you. If you're not a current
Google Talk user, you'll need to create a new Google Account or sign
up for Gmail. If you have a Gmail account, you can use Google Talk
with your Gmail username and password. You can also use the Google
Talk Gadget; just go to http://www.google.com/talk/ and click 'Launch
Google Talk Gadget.'"
http://www.google.com/support/talkgadget/bin/answer.py?answer=86171

Create a Google Talk chatback badge
http://www.google.com/talk/service/badge/New

Google Talk
http://www.google.com/talk/

Goolag: Google Vulnerability Scanner

Goolag program mines Google for hidden, sensitive information
March 3, 2008
"It's called "Google hacking" - a slick data-mining technique used by
the Internet's cops and crooks alike to unearth sensitive material
mistakenly posted to public Web sites."
"And it has just gotten easier, thanks to a program that automates
what has typically been painstaking manual labor. The program's
authors say they hope it will "screw a large Internet search engine
and make the Web a safer place.""
"Google hacking doesn't mean anyone's hacking the Mountain View
company's Web site. Rather, it refers to a sophisticated searching
technique used to uncover flaws in the way Web sites handle
confidential details, such as public files containing passwords and
credit card numbers, and clues about the vulnerability of the site's
own servers."
"It works by examining the hidden recesses of a Web site, areas that
have been indexed by Google but don't pop up in traditional searches.
Sometimes Web sites accidentally post revealing information about
themselves, either because employees mistakenly put confidential
documents online, or the site wasn't properly configured to obscure
sensitive areas."
"Security experts say Google hacking wouldn't be an issue if Web sites
had proper security safeguards in place."
"By looking through Google for evidence of specific types of files
used by a Web site or telling responses from the Web site's servers,
hackers can learn a lot about how the site was built - and thus how to
begin crafting their attacks."
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/03/03/BUR0VA4I0.DTL&type=tech

Goolag Scan Scans Vulnerabilities
Feb 26, 2008
"How safe is your private, or for that matter, your organization's
critical information on the Web? Not very safe -- an American group of
hackers which goes by the name "Cult of the Dead Cow" or "cDc" has
released their latest Web tool named "Goolag Scan" that exposes how
crippled online security actually is."
"According to its creators, "Goolag Scan" works as a Web auditing
tool, and enables anyone and everyone to audit their own Web site
through Google. The scanner technology is based on "Google hacking", a
form of vulnerability research developed by a hacker named Johnny."
""Goolag Scan" is actually a small .NET program that can be used to
search and list out vulnerabilities and private information from
across the Web. It can discover Web applications, back doors, or
documents that are involuntarily put on the Internet that contain
sensitive information like tell-tale error messages, or Java applets
for remote control of surveillance cameras."
"The tool provides pre-configured Google search queries in categories
such as "vulnerable servers", "sensitive online shopping information",
"files containing juicy information", "files containing passwords",
and many more. Once you select such sets or even individual keywords,
Google looks for them and lists matching results."
"Reportedly, excessive use of the tool will probably alert Google and
make them block your IP address."
"According to the tool developers, it can help Web administrators of
government, large corporations, and so on, to wake up to the
discrepancies their Web base has and fix them immediately before a
hacker takes over."
"And for those who don't know, "cDc" was formed in 1984. One of its
famous accolades has been publishing the back-door program "Back
Orifice", which threw light upon how easy it is to take complete
remote control of a Windows PC."
http://www.techtree.com/India/News/Goolag_Scan_Scans_Vulnerabilities/551-87128-643.html

Google-Powered Hacking Makes Search A Threat
February 22, 2008
"Wednesday saw the debut of the latest such tool, which derives its
power from Google's vast index. That's when the Cult of the Dead Cow,
the self-proclaimed "world's most attractive hacker group," released a
Web auditing tool called Goolag Scanner."
""It's no big secret that the Web is the platform," said cDc official
Oxblood Ruffin, in a statement. "And this platform pretty much sucks
from a security perspective. Goolag Scanner provides one more tool for
Web site owners to patch up their online properties. We've seen some
pretty scary holes through random tests with the scanner in North
America, Europe, and the Middle East. If I were a government, a large
corporation, or anyone with a large Web site, I'd be downloading this
beast and aiming it at my site yesterday. The vulnerabilities are that
serious.""
http://www.informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=206801429

Hackers Use IFRAME To Hose Google Users

Hackers find clever new way to hose Google users
March 6, 2008
"Hackers have found a new way to get Google to point to malicious
websites with the help of unwitting websites such as ZDNet Asia and
TorrentReactor."
"As a result, at least 20,000 Google search results that appeared to
lead to pages on the Asian version of ZDNet and the BitTorrent tracker
site actually directed end users to sites that attempted to install
malware."
"The hack, which was first documented by Dutch researcher Dancho
Danchev, takes advantage of the practice by ZDNet Asia and many other
sites of caching search queries typed into their search boxes. The
terms are then indexed by Google and other search engines and included
in the results they return. Exploiting the weakness is as easy as
typing popular search terms into a popular website along with the text
of an IFRAME that points to a malicious website. Within time, the
strings will be included in results returned by Google and others."
"Google goes to great lengths to protect users against by warning when
a website included in search results is believed to be malicious. But
at time of writing, queries on Google for "jamie presley," "mari
misato" and "risa coda" got one or more poisoned link in the first 10
results. More than 20,000 Google results contained such redirects,
according to F-Secure, the antivirus firm ."
http://www.channelregister.co.uk/2008/03/06/googe_iframe_piggybacking/

ZDNet Asia and TorrentReactor IFRAME-ed
March 4, 2008
"This currently ongoing malware embedded attack aimed at ZDNet Asia
and TorrentReactor is very creative at the strategic level, whereas
the IFRAME-ing tactic remains the same. The sites' search engines seem
to have been exploited to have the IFRAME injected, not embedded,
within the last 24 hours, redirecting to known Russian Business
Network's IPs and ex-customers in the face of rogue anti-virus and
anti-spyware applications. For the time being, zdnetasia.com has
11,200 cached pages loading the IFRAME, and torrentreactor.net -
29,300 cached pages loading the IFRAME. Even worse, the IFRAME
embedded search results hosted on their sites, are appearing between
the first ten to twenty search results, thanks to the sites high page
ranks."
http://ddanchev.blogspot.com/2008/03/zdnet-asia-and-torrentreactor-iframe-ed.html

Annual Google Communications Intelligence Report 2008

Google Report Highlights Spam As Top Security Issue
March 7, 2008
"Having recently acquired messaging security company Postini, Google
now finds itself in the threat-prediction business. And as is the case
with just about every other computer security company, Google has
research to show everyone how dangerous the online world has become."
"Thus we come to the 2008 Annual Google Communications Intelligence
Report."
"Google's security forecast calls for continued spam-blended virus
attacks with an increasing focus on identity theft. The attacks will
rely on social engineering, the report says, and will rely on messages
that reference current events, like the upcoming Olympic Games and
natural disasters."
""Further, virus attacks will target executives at specific companies
whose intellectual property is deemed valuable on the black market by
the hackers," the report says. "These attacks will appear to come from
legitimate business agencies, such as the Internal Revenue Service,
the Better Business Bureau, and the Securities and Exchange
Commission.""
"Google said it expects such incidents will prompt organizations to
eliminate live links in customer e-mail communications."
"Google also anticipates an increase in the deployment of outbound
message monitoring systems, in the adoption of encryption, and in the
use of archiving technology."
http://www.informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=206902563

Google says spam is huge corporate headache
March 6, 2008
"Google released a white paper on Thursday about trends in electronic
communications systems at corporations and found, to no surprise, that
spam is a huge problem and getting worse."
"While overall e-mail message volume per user grew 47 percent, the
spam volume was up 57 percent in 2007 to record levels, according to
data from Google's Postini cited in the 2008 Annual Google
Communications Intelligence Report."
"The average "unprotected user" would have received 36,000 spam
messages in the year, up from 23,000 in 2006, the report said."
"Stopping spam and other malware is the top priority for the
government, legal, manufacturing and, for the most part the tech
industry, while healthcare, financial and retail companies are more
concerned with complying with government regulations, according to
online surveys of 575 CEOs, CIOs, and CTOs."
http://www.news.com/8301-10784_3-9888233-7.html

2008 Annual Google Communications Intelligence Report
"Executive Summary"
"At the end of 2007, Google conducted an annual online survey of
messaging professionals. Providing insight into the major
communications trends in the past year as well as the pressing issues
and concerns for the coming one, this survey is the result of 575
global interviews with CEOs, CIOs, and CTOs in large, multinational
enterprises as well as small organizations."
"This report summarizes the key findings of the survey, including
detailed statistical analysis of the key trends in business
communications in 2007 and how these trends translate into priorities
for business communications professionals in the year ahead. Following
the summary of the research findings, the report touches on Google’s
expectations for the coming year as well as defines some best
practices in business communication to help organizations address the
expected challenges in the industry in 2008."
"Key findings"
"1. The number of electronic messages increased in 2007, with spam
still a huge issue for most organizations"
"2. Executives look to IT personnel − not end-users − to ensure
security and compliance"
"3. IT professionals face serious challenges in reaching security and 
compliance goals"
"4. Security and compliance challenges negatively impact IT 
productivity"
"5. Communications security and compliance solutions based on the 
Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) model can address these productivity 
issues"
"6. In the year ahead, Google expects the number of threats to 
stabilize but the complexity of these threats to increase 
dramatically"
http://www.google.com/a/help/intl/en/security/pdf/cir_08.pdf

Related links:

Postini Whitepapers
http://www.postini.com/whitepapers/

Google Apps Security and Compliance Services
http://www.google.com/a/help/intl/en/security/index.html

Google Down for Many in Germany

Google Down for Many in Germany
March 6, 2008
"Reports are trickling in that Google is down for many in Germany.
Hebbet in the forum says it may be a problem with T-Com, meaning those
with other providers would still be able to see it. At the moment, I
can’t access Gmail, Google Reader, Google Analytics, Google News and
so on."
"Update: Google is back now here. It’s 17:32 now, and Hebbet posted
about Google being down at 15:43, so that makes it a down-time of at
least over 1 1/2 hours. Google Germany sent me this statement,
prepared while Google was still down (translated from German):
“Apparently this afternoon there were problems with accessing Google
through a provider. We are currently investigating the causes and hope
that users will soon be able to access Google as usual.”"
"According to a brief Heise.de news item just posted, German Telekom
stated that Google was down for them too but that they were not able
to see anything wrong with their own net infrastructure. Heise says
the beginning of the down-time was “around 15:00”, according to their
readers (Golem.de says 16:00 o’clock, quoting a Telekom statement as
well, though per Hebbet’s comment mentioned above that doesn’t seem to
be quite correct). According to some comments, not just Telekom but
also 1&1 users saw Google down, though one user comments that 1&1 is
using the IP ranges of Telekom."
http://blogoscoped.com/archive/2008-03-06-n22.html

Google.com Goes Down in Germany For Hours
March 7, 2008
"Seems like yesterday, German Google users were unable to access any
of the Google properties including Google.com, Google Mail, Google
Groups, Google Reader and so on."
"Reportedly it impacted both Telekom and 1&1 users. Google Blogoscoped
is based on Germany and has a lot of details on the downtime. In fact,
he received a statement while Google was offline in Germany that
translated into:"
"Apparently this afternoon there were problems with accessing Google
through a provider. We are currently investigating the causes and hope
that users will soon be able to access Google as usual."
"There is also a huge thread at the Abakus German Forum that has tons
and tons of German SEOs talking about the downtime. It seems like it
was fairly serious. But it is not working."
http://www.seroundtable.com/archives/016487.html

Links:

http://www.webmasterworld.com/google/3592977.htm
http://www.abakus-internet-marketing.de/foren/viewtopic/t-53788.html

Google Pulls Map Images At Pentagon's Request

Google Caves To Pentagon Wishes
March 7, 2008
"The Pentagon said that Google's Street Views is a threat to national
security and made Google pull images taken on streets near U.S.
military bases. Google complied with the governmental order, even
though the images were taken from public streets. Freedom of
information and security butt heads once again."
"The government was concerned that the images, which included views of
the entrances to military bases, were a threat. Gen. Gene Renuart,
head of the military command responsible for homeland defense, said,
"It actually shows where all the guards are. It shows how the barriers
go up and down. It shows how to get in and out of buildings. I think
that poses a real security risk for our military installations.""
"But the images were taken from public streets, where anyone could
walk and take the same pictures and/or video and post them to the
Internet. The question remains whether the government had the right to
request that the images be removed. While that question is assuredly
being debated, Google complied. Google spokesman Larry Yu said, "We
have been contacted by the military. In those instances where they
(the U.S military) have expressed concerns about the imagery, we have
accommodated their requests.""
http://www.informationweek.com/blog/main/archives/2008/03/google_caves_to.html

Pentagon rattles sabre at Google's Street ViewSearch monolith banned
from military bases
March 7, 2008
"The US defence department has banned Google from capturing images of
military facilities for its entertaining Street View facility on
Google Maps following the shock discovery of intimate pics of Fort Sam
Houston in San Antonio, Texas."
"It said in a statement that the offending snaps included "360-degree
views of the covered area to include access control points, barriers,
headquarters, facilities and community areas", thereby posing a threat
to national security."
"Google spokesman Larry Yu admitted to the BBC that the drive-by
recording of Fort Sam Houston had been "a mistake". He added that
Google has "a compliant image removal policy - not only relative to
the military but to consumers also", a reference to privacy concerns
which last August led the search monolith to agree to obscure number
plates and faces on request."
"In the case of the military, Google has wasted no time obscuring the
offending facility by removing it altogether from Street View"
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/03/07/fort_sam_google/

Links:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/mar/07/google.internet1
http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/article3503624.ece
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7282635.stm
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/03/07/142259
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2008/03/07/wgoogle107.xml
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5gJWAqizzLP80ddn0-BHPl7hy1uvgD8V89BT80
http://government.zdnet.com/?p=3695

Google's New Advanced Search Page

Google’s New Advanced Search Page
March 6, 2008
"Search Engine Roundtable reports that Google updated their advanced
search page. I can’t see it yet, so perhaps it’s still being tested or
still being rolled out? Then new advanced page looks more structured
and less complicated, as several “more advanced” features (like
searching for specific Creative Common licenses, or SafeSearch) have
been put into an expandable box. Hovering over the “tip” links to the
right will display information boxes right on the page, according to
Search Engine Roundtable."
http://blogoscoped.com/archive/2008-03-06-n79.html

Google Updates Design for Advanced Search Page
March 5, 2008
"Google seems to have updated the design of the advanced search form.
Here are pictures of the new page design, as I see them right now"
http://www.seroundtable.com/archives/016456.html

Google Redesigns the Advanced Search Page
March 6, 2008
"Google's advanced search page contrasts with the simplicity of the
homepage and the search results pages. Most people don't even notice
the small link placed next to the search box and those who click on it
find the page too confusing. Google's Daniel Russell said that 50% of
the people who open the advanced search page leave it without
completing the search. This is not surprising if you look at the page:
you can choose the language of the search results, the formats, the
usage rights, but also add numeric ranges and negative keywords to a
query. The most useful features can also be accessed using operators,
while the others aren't grouped intuitively."
http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2008/03/google-redesigns-advanced-search-page.html

Screenshot:

http://groups.google.com/group/Google-Pictures/attach/f083ea7faf3abe9f/google_web_search_advanced_search_winxp_2008_03_08.gif?part=2&view=1
http://groups.google.com/group/Google-Pictures/msg/f083ea7faf3abe9f

iGoogle Gadgets for Google Webmaster Tools

iGoogle Gadgets for Webmaster Tools
February 28, 2008
"The Webmaster Tools team strives to serve all types of webmasters,
from the minimalist to those who use every tool they can find."
"Now there's something for those of you who would prefer to access
only the features of Webmaster Tools that you need: we've just
released Webmaster Tools Gadgets for iGoogle."
"Here's the simple process to start using these Gadgets right away.
(Note: this assumes you've already got a Webmaster Tools account and
have verified at least one site.)"
"1. Visit Webmaster Tools and select any site that you've validated
from the dashboard."
"2. Click on the Tools section."
"3. Click on Gadgets sub-section."
"4. Click on the big "Add an iGoogle Webmaster Tools homepage"
button."
"5. Click the "Add to Google" button on the following confirm page to
add the new tab to iGoogle."
"6. Now you're in iGoogle, where you should see your new Google
Webmaster Tools tab with a number of Gadgets. Enjoy!"
"You'll notice that each Gadget has a drop down menu at the top which
lets you select from all the sites you have validated to see that
Gadget's information for the particular site you select."
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2008/02/igoogle-gadgets-for-webmaster-tools.html

Screenshot:

http://groups.google.com/group/Google-Pictures/attach/ee7fc478e49bb3c4/igoogle_gadgets_for_webmaster_tools_winxp_2008_03_08.gif?part=2&view=1
http://groups.google.com/group/Google-Pictures/msg/ee7fc478e49bb3c4

Google Static Maps API

Google Maps Without the Scripting
February 21, 2008
"the Google Maps API requires JavaScript, can take a while to load
over slow connections, and requires some overhead to maintain a
dynamic website."
"The Google Static Maps API provides a simpler way to add maps to your
website. Rather than use JavaScript, the Google Static Maps API
creates map images on the fly via simple requests to the Static Maps
service with HTTP requests. No JavaScript, no overhead. Just create a
special URL as the src attribute within an <img> tag and let the
Static Maps service create your image."
http://googlemapsapi.blogspot.com/2008/02/google-maps-without-scripting.html

Google Static Maps API
February 22, 2008
"Google released what they call the Static Maps API. Not unlike the
previous Google Charts API, this is basically just a parametrized
image URL – the light-weight* sibling of the JavaScript Maps API."
"At first look, the Static Maps API seems like a nice alternative to
the full-blown JavaScript API – it's not interactive, but a little
more accessible."
"*However, there's a "query limit" of "1000 unique image requests per
user per day," Google says (disclaiming that "additional requests of
an identical image, in general, do not count towards this limit beyond
the original request"). It's not made 100% clear how Google counts
this, but depending on the type of use this may mean you need to add
caching."
http://blogoscoped.com/archive/2008-02-22-n75.html

New Static API Takes the Work Out of Google Maps
February 22, 2008
"If you'd love to have some maps on your site, but the complexity of
the Google Maps API gives you a headache, Google has come up with
another option — the new Static Maps API."
"Google’s static maps are just images that require no Javascript or
other dynamic tools to work. The images are especially handy for
mobile sites or other situation where Javascript isn’t practical."
"The new API is very similar in practice to the recently-launched
charts API — you just need to send a few parameters in a specially
crafted URL."
http://blog.wired.com/monkeybites/2008/02/new-static-api.html

Static Maps API Developer's Guide
"Welcome to the developer documentation for the Google Static Maps
API! The Google Static Maps API lets you embed a Google Maps image on
your webpage without requiring JavaScript or any dynamic page loading.
The Google Static Map service creates your map based on URL parameters
sent through a standard HTTP request and returns the map as an image
you can display on your web page!"
"Note: the Google Static Maps API requires a Maps API key. If you
haven't already done so, sign up for a free API key."
http://code.google.com/apis/maps/documentation/staticmaps/

G-Archiver Scam

G-Archiver Scam?
March 10, 2008
"Coding Horror reports that Gmail backup software G-Archiver emails
the user name and password of users to the apparent creator, John
Terry. Dustin Brooks, who reverse-engineered the software and found
the creator’s user name and password, was shocked to see 1,777 such
messages with user credentials when logging in to John’s account. He
then went ahead and deleted all these messages, changed John’s
password, and contacted Google support."
"Coding Horror’s Jeff Attwood comments, “it’s difficult to imagine any
scenario where this isn’t a completely malicious violation of people’s
trust.” If these reports are true, it’s another lesson that in general
it’s bad advice to provide your Google account credentials to any
other place than google.com as seen in your browser address bar – not
in desktop apps, not on other domains, not on new windows popping up
claiming to be google.com etc."
http://blogoscoped.com/archive/2008-03-10-n53.html

A Question of Programming Ethics
http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/001072.html

All-Time Greatest Google Songs

All-time greatest Google songs
March 6, 2008
"You have to admit, the word Google does have a musical ring to it. So
musical, in fact, that the word has been woven into the lyrics of
numerous songs, not that I knew that without doing a Google search."
"Fittingly enough, Google's YouTube site serves up a solid collection
of music videos that feature Google in song titles, from parody "Just
Google" (a take-off on Michael Jackson's 1980s hit "Beat It" or
perhaps more accurately, Weird Al Yankovic's "Eat It") to the super
cheery "GoogleHead" to a couple of love songs. What's more, YouTube
itself is finding itself in lyrics, such as in Mariah Carey's new
"Touch My Body"). Of course Google isn't the first tech company with a
tuneful history: IBM proudly promoted "corporate fellowship" songs
back in the day."
http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/25746

"Just Google" - a parody of "Beat It" by Michael Jackson
Written by Lex Friedman and Seth Brown, performed by Lex Friedman.
http://www.thefriedmans.net/blog/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KO_ey4v1ccA

Googlehead Google Heads
"GoogleHeads" song by Laurie Berkner, produced by Kevin "Nalts" Nalty.
http://www.kevinnalts.com/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PlJNV0TkxIg

Google Song by The Zach Tate Band
http://www.zachtate.com/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GwfNvTy9AMM

The Google Song
Lyrics by Jeff Stambovsky.
http://stambosongs.blogspot.com/
http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/25746?page=0%2C2

The Googlers
Performed by Yariv Ben Yehuda.
http://agoogler.com/video.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OLh1jU6tgek

A song about Google
Lyrics by James McGraw, performed by Edward Evans.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pJZi4A13abw

The Google Song
Performed by Sputniko.
http://www.myspace.com/hiromiozaki
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o9bEclzSBlU

Diane42 (Finding Love On Google) - Original Song
Written and performed by Mark Easley.
http://www.goldhat.net/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OT9xDrqwUaY

More Spam Originating from Gmail

More Spam Originating from Gmail
March 11, 2008
"The email security vendor MessageLabs published a report about the
increasing number of spam messages originating from Gmail. "Analysis
of spam shows that 4.6 percent of all spam originates from Web mail-
based services and the proportion of spam from Gmail increased two-
fold from 1.3 percent in January to 2.6 percent in February, mainly
promoting adult-oriented websites. Yahoo! Mail was the most abused Web
mail service responsible for sending 88.7 percent of all Web mail-
based spam.""
"Spammers create accounts at free mail services like Yahoo Mail or
Gmail, but to make the process more efficient, they need to automatize
it. The major challenge is that most web mail providers use CAPTCHAs
("Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans
Apart") and they are difficult to solve automatically. Last month,
Websense Security Labs discovered that spammers managed to create bots
that automatically sign up for new Gmail accounts with a success rate
of 20%."
http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2008/03/more-spam-originating-from-gmail.html

Watch Out for Gmail Spam, Analyst Warns
March 10, 2008
"According to MessageLabs, the amount of spam originating from Gmail
accounts doubled, from 1.3 percent in January to 2.6 percent in
February."
"The amount of spam may not be significant in and of itself. But
according to MessageLabs, it's proof positive that the CAPTCHAs
(Completely Automated Public Turing Test to Tell Computers and Humans
Apart) that guard the doors of new Gmail accounts have been broken."
"Relatively speaking, the amount of spam originating from Gmail
accounts is a drop in the bucket, compared to the spam originating
from Yahoo. In terms of all spam sent from free ad-supported email
accounts, spam from Yahoo represented 88.7 percent in February, with
4.6 percent from Hotmail and 4.2 percent from MSN."
"What the new Gmail spam means, according to MessageLabs senior
antispam technologist Matt Sergeant, is that unknown Gmail email now
must be treated with the same care as any other. "Don't trust email
from addresses that you don't know," he said."
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2704,2274776,00.asp

Gmail CAPTCHA cracking leads to spam surge
March 12, 2008
"Spammers are creating huge numbers of Gmail accounts and using them
to multiply their message blasts by circumventing the test Google uses
to neutralize automated sign-up tools, according to a report from
security vendor MessageLabs."
"MessageLabs monitored a surge in spam originating from Google Gmail
accounts at the end of February. Matt Sergeant, a senior antispam
technologist for the company, said the uptick indicates that spammers
have found ways to sneak past CAPTCHAS (Completely Automated Public
Turing Test To Tell Computers and Humans Apart), which are designed to
defend against automated sign-up tools by requiring the user to enter
the letters to validate that a human is requesting the account."
"Entities such as Yahoo and Hotmail also use CAPTCHAs, and if spammers
have indeed found ways to circumvent the mechanism, it signals a
dangerous trend for the Internet as a whole, Sergeant said."
""If spammers have solved the CAPTCHA problem that's bad news because
so many sites use this to prevent spam and keep sites safe," he said.
Also noteworthy is that the bad guys like to use big companies like
Google as human shields, he said, adding, "You can't blacklist Gmail
or Hotmail because so much legitimate email comes through those.
Everyone gets upset if their email is blocked, so now you have to drop
down into content filtering, which is more difficult than blocking an
IP address.""
http://searchsecurity.techtarget.com.au/news/article.asp?DocID=1304779

Google Closes Acquisition of DoubleClick

We've officially acquired DoubleClick
March 11, 2008
"I'm pleased to share the news that we completed our acquisition of
DoubleClick today. Although it's been nearly a year since we announced
our intention to acquire DoubleClick last April, we are no less
excited today about the benefits that the combination of our two
companies will bring to the online advertising market."
"Because we have been waiting for regulatory approval for our
acquisition, we've been limited by law in the extent to which we could
conduct detailed integration planning to map our way forward. That
work will begin in earnest now. Although we don’t have detailed plans
to announce today, we will communicate regularly with you about our
progress in integrating our two companies."
"As with most mergers, there may be reductions in headcount. We expect
these to take place in the U.S. and possibly in other regions as well.
We know that DoubleClick is built on the strength of its people. For
this reason we’ll strive to minimize the impact of this process on all
of our clients and employees."
"Advertisers and publishers who work with us have long asked that we
complement our search and content-based text advertising with display
advertising capabilities. DoubleClick gives Google the leading
platform for display advertising, enabling us to rapidly bring
advances to the market in technology and infrastructure that will
dramatically improve the effectiveness, measurability and performance
of digital media for publishers, advertisers and agencies."
"As the combination of Google and DoubleClick delivers better, more
relevant display ads, we're also looking forward to delivering an
improved online experience to users. Because user trust is paramount
to the success of our business, users will continue to benefit from
our commitment to protecting user privacy following this acquisition.
And our scale and infrastructure mean that users will also be spending
less time waiting for web pages to load. Ultimately, we believe that
by combining our advertising network with DoubleClick's display ad
serving products, and by investing resources in the display ad
business, we will be able to help publishers and advertisers generate
more revenue. That in turn will fuel the creation of even more rich
and diverse content for Internet users everywhere."
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/03/weve-officially-acquired-doubleclick.html

Google Closes Acquisition of DoubleClick
March 11, 2008
"Google Inc. announced today that it has completed its acquisition of
DoubleClick, a company that offers online ad serving and management
technology to advertisers, web publishers and ad agencies."
"Eric Schmidt, Google's Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, said,
"We are thrilled that our acquisition of DoubleClick has closed. With
DoubleClick, Google now has the leading display ad platform, which
will enable us to rapidly bring to market advances in technology and
infrastructure that will dramatically improve the effectiveness,
measurability and performance of digital media for publishers,
advertisers and agencies, while improving the relevance of advertising
for users.""
http://www.google.com/intl/en/press/pressrel/20080311_doubleclick.html

European Commission OK's Google-DoubleClick Deal
March 11, 2008
"It was expected by now, but the European Commission has just approved
Google’s $3.1 billion bid for ad serving firm DoubleClick. Even though
competitors such as Microsoft and privacy advocates had both opposed
the deal, the EC imposed no conditions. Its statement:"
"“The Commission’s in-depth market investigation found that Google and
DoubleClick were not exerting major competitive constraints on each
other’s activities and could, therefore, not be considered as
competitors at the moment.”"
"I’m not entirely surprised. For all of Google’s power, especially in
Europe, DoubleClick’s business looked rather different from Google’s,
so it was tough to make the case that Google was swallowing a rival to
concentrate its power. Fact is, Google is nowhere in online display
ads, where both Microsoft and Yahoo have considerable leadership."
"Google also said it closed the deal. The news this morning has bouyed
Google’s stock, which has been hammered by concerns that it may be
feeling the slowing economy for the first time."
http://www.businessweek.com/the_thread/techbeat/archives/2008/03/european_commis.html

Google Closes DoubleClick Purchase After EU Approval
March 11, 2008
"Google Inc., owner of the most popular Internet search engine, closed
its $3.1 billion acquisition of DoubleClick Inc. after European
regulators said the purchase wouldn't harm competition in the online
ad market."
"Google said it completed the deal after the European Commission, the
27-nation EU's antitrust authority in Brussels, approved the
transaction without conditions. Google announced the purchase in
April, part of a plan to bolster sales of Internet ads that display
pictures and videos."
"``This gives Google an excellent foothold into the display- ad market
and rounds out the products they can bring to their clients,'' Colin
Gillis, an analyst at Canaccord Adams in New York, said in a telephone
interview. He recommends buying Google shares, which he doesn't own."
"The EU approval is a blow to Yahoo! Inc. and Microsoft Corp., which
expressed concerns that the combination would hurt competition in the
$40.9 billion global online ad market. Microsoft complained to U.S.
and EU officials that it may be shut out of the combined company's ad
network."
"In December, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission approved the deal, the
biggest in Google's nine-year history, without imposing asset sales or
other conditions."
"``With DoubleClick, Google now has the leading display-ad platform,''
Google Chief Executive Officer Eric Schmidt said in a statement."
"Schmidt said in a blog posting that Google may cut an unspecified
number of jobs at DoubleClick in the U.S. and possibly other regions."
"Google, based in Mountain View, California, generates revenue from
selling text-based ads that appear next to search results.
DoubleClick's two main products help Web publishers and companies
manage online advertising. The software handles display ads, which
include graphics or animation."
"Microsoft, the world's largest software maker, trails Google in Web
search services. It said last April that Google's planned acquisition
would give its rival more than 80 percent of the market for ads
displayed on third-party Web sites."
"Microsoft plans to make its own acquisition in the online-ad market
with a $44.6 billion bid for Yahoo. That offer, announced on Feb. 1,
was rejected by Yahoo's board. Microsoft bought DoubleClick rival
AQuantive Inc. for $6 billion last year."
"Google dominates the Internet search market with 58.5 percent.
Microsoft has 9.8 percent, while Yahoo has 22.2 percent, according to
January data from Reston, Virginia- based research firm ComScore Inc."
"The commission said in a statement that Google and DoubleClick ``were
not exerting major competitive constraints on each other's activities
and could, therefore, not be considered as competitors.''"
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aYJct3Y7jmxk&refer=home

DoubleClick
http://www.doubleclick.com/

Links:

http://money.cnn.com/news/newsfeeds/articles/newstex/AFX-0013-23686402.htm
http://www.infoworld.com/article/08/03/11/EU-approves-Google-DoubleClick-deal_1.html
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120524277833327159.html?mod=googlenews_wsj
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2704,2275212,00.asp
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/03/11/business/11googlefw.php
http://www.upi.com/NewsTrack/Business/2008/03/12/european_regulators_approve_google_deal/1564/
http://www.financialnews-us.com/?page=ushome&contentid=2350033581
http://www.betanews.com/article/Now_bigger_Google_prepares_to_get_smaller/1205338614
http://blogoscoped.com/archive/2008-03-11-n61.html
http://uk.reuters.com/article/internetNews/idUKL1187387120080311
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5iHaHK1oU7z5nfrSaA7z0qxA5Tn3gD8VBAN4O0

Google Gears on Mobile Devices

Power up your mobile web applications
March 3, 2008
"If you've ever tried coding up a mobile client application, you've
probably noticed that the huge variety of mobile operating systems
makes it tough to build rich applications that work on every device.
We face the same challenges. But what if developers could deploy
applications directly to mobile browsers rather than develop native
applications? That would simplify the development process, as
developers could use the same coding skills to create mobile
applications. Even better, if these mobile web applications could work
offline, users would be able to use them when they are disconnected
from the network."
"Today we're announcing the launch of Google Gears for mobile, a
mobile browser extension for creating rich web applications for mobile
devices. The first version is now available for Internet Explorer
Mobile on Windows Mobile 5 and 6. It's a fully functional port of
Google Gears v0.2 that can be used to develop offline capability into
your mobile web applications. You can also create slick and responsive
applications by hiding latency issues through controlled caching of
data and storage of information between sessions. We're also working
to bring Google Gears for mobile to Android and other mobile platforms
with capable web browsers."
"There are already a handful of Windows Mobile web apps that use
Google Gears for mobile, such as the personal finance service Buxfer
and online applications provider Zoho."
http://google-code-updates.blogspot.com/2008/03/power-up-your-mobile-web-applications.html

Google Gears in Your Pocket
March 3, 2008
"Today is an exciting day for mobile application development, as it
marks the first release of Google Gears on mobile devices. Gears is
initially available for Internet Explorer on Windows Mobile 5 and 6."
"Consider the sad state of mobile app development today: you often
need to write native code, and build against four different SDKs,
using five different compilers. It's a daunting task, which explains
why so few people write mobile applications."
"Web apps are an obvious way to deliver functionality across mobile
devices. You can write your application just once. So why hasn't this
approach been more widely adopted? Mobile browsers simply cannot do
much of what you want applications to do."
"Enter Google Gears. The mission of Gears is to extend the
capabilities of web browsers. It is clear to us that mobile browsers
can benefit just as much as desktop ones. By adding features to mobile
browsers, it becomes possible to deploy an increasing number of mobile
applications as web apps."
"Furthermore, we plan to keep the Gears API consistent across all
platforms. So as long as you account for browser differences (such as
different screen sizes and DOM quirks), the rest of your application
will "just work" across users' systems. You don't need to worry
whether you are running on a mobile device or a desktop machine."
"We are very excited by the potential here. We expect mobile apps
built using Google Gears to usher in a new trend in mobile application
development."
http://gearsblog.blogspot.com/2008/03/google-gears-in-your-pocket.html

Shifting Google Gears to mobile
March 3, 2008
"Ever use a mobile web application and suddenly lose your cell
connection? That's happened to me many times. If you've shared my
pain, you'll be excited to know that we've launched Google Gears for
mobile, which lets users access Gears-enabled mobile web apps offline.
Initially available for Internet Explorer Mobile on Windows Mobile 5
and 6 devices, mobile web app developers have already started
integrating Gears for mobile into their online services."
"Take Zoho and Buxfer, for example: Zoho is a powerful suite of web-
based productivity applications, while Buxfer is an innovative
personal finance web application that helps you track your money. With
Google Gears for mobile integrated into mobile Zoho and Buxfer, you
can now access these web applications even when your phone is
disconnected from the mobile web. Stuck on a plane? No problem — you
can still read your docs on your mobile with Zoho Writer Mobile
offline. Want to buy that new plasma TV, but can't remember how much
is in your account? Check your balance with Buxfer's mobile web
application, even if there is no cell phone signal. Try them out on
your Windows Mobile 6 device by going to m.buxfer.com or
mobile.zoho.com."
"When you first access mobile Buxfer or Zoho Writer on your Windows
Mobile device and go offline, you will be asked to install Google
Gears for mobile. Once installed, Gears sits happily on your phone
helping you stay connected to your data -- even when you lose your
network connection."
"If you're a developer who's interested in creating mobile web
applications using Google Gears for mobile you can find out more
information on our developer site. Finally, if you're not a Windows
Mobile user, stay tuned -- we're working to roll out Google Gears for
other platforms with capable web browsers, including Android."
http://googlemobile.blogspot.com/2008/03/shifting-google-gears-to-mobile.html

Now Google Gears Takes Smartphone Apps Offline
March 4, 2008
"Google recently announced that Gears is available for the Windows
Mobile platform. This will allow you to continue using your Web-based
applications even when you lose your data connection or are in an
offline mode. Now you have one less excuse for not getting your
projects done on time."
"Any mobile professional knows how frustrating it is to be using a
mobile Web-based application on your smartphone and lose your
connection. Unless you have some great software controlling your
packet session, you can lose where you were and have to start all over
again. Or simply lose the ability to use the app. Either way, it's no
fun. Well, for certain Windows Mobile 5 and 6 applications, that will
no longer be a problem."
"Google has made its Gears software available for pocket Internet
Explorer on WinMo 5 and 6, and is working on developing a mobile
version of Gears for other browsers and other platforms, including
Android. In order for Gears to work, though, the applications you're
using need to be Gears-enabled."
http://www.informationweek.com/blog/main/archives/2008/03/now_google_gear.html

Google Gears Comes Out for Mobile
March 4, 2008
"Google's quest to keep browser-based applications running while
offline is expanding to where it may be needed most: mobile devices."
"A version of the Google Gears browser extension software is available
to developers, according to a Monday blog posting by Google Mobile
Product Manager Charles Wiles. So far it's available only for
Microsoft Internet Explorer Mobile on Windows Mobile 5 and 6 devices,
but there will be versions for other platforms, including Google's own
Android system, Wiles wrote."
"Google Gears, still in beta testing, lets people continue to work
with Web-based applications after they've gone offline. Data and
documents are saved on the device so users can see and work on them
any time. Gears is already available for desktops and notebooks, with
versions for Internet Explorer on Windows XP and Vista, and for
Firefox on XP, Vista, MacOS and Linux. Gears for Mobile is a port of
that software."
"Although notebook PC users sometimes fire up their systems where
wired or wireless Internet access isn't available, users of handheld
devices with cellular data services often are at the mercy of carrier
networks where coverage comes in and out. Using Gears to cache data on
devices, developers can create Web-based applications that not only
are usable completely offline, but also are more responsive where
networks suffer delays, according to Google."
http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,143114-c,google/article.html

Windows Mobile
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsmobile/default.mspx

Google Gears on Mobile Devices
"Google Gears is now available on Windows Mobile 5 and 6 devices."
"Mobile devices are, by their nature, often disconnected from the
network. Even when connected, the latencies in data connections in
mobile networks can make web applications sluggish. Google Gears gives
developers the tools to overcome these obstacles."
"Google Gears works in exactly the same way on a Windows Mobile 5 or 6
device as it does on a desktop PC. If you've already written an
application that uses Google Gears, your application will also work on
a Windows Mobile 5 or 6 device. Except, of course, only within the
limitations of that device. This means you need to consider things
such as small screen and limited ability to input text as well as the
limitations of the Document Object Model and CSS APIs present on
mobile devices. Limitations of Windows Mobile 5 and 6 devices are
discussed later in this document."
http://code.google.com/apis/gears/mobile.html

Google Gears API
What is the Google Gears API?
"Google Gears is an open source browser extension that lets developers
create web applications that can run offline."
Features
"Google Gears extends browsers to enable richer web applications.
Gears modules include:"
"LocalServer Cache and serve application resources (HTML, JavaScript,
images, etc.) locally"
"Database Store data locally in a fully-searchable relational
database"
"WorkerPool Make your web applications more responsive by performing
resource-intensive operations asynchronously"
http://code.google.com/apis/gears/

Google Gears API: LocalServer API
http://code.google.com/apis/gears/api_localserver.html

Google Gears API: Database Module API
http://code.google.com/apis/gears/api_database.html

Google Gears API: WorkerPool Module API
http://code.google.com/apis/gears/api_workerpool.html

Google I/O

Announcing Google I/O
March 10, 2008
"Its been about a year since I last blogged about a big Google
developer event. During that time, we’ve seen a number of new
technologies emerge which developers can use to build killer web
applications. OpenSocial, Gears, and Android are a few that come to
mind. But there is also a lot to learn if you really want to get the
most out of these products."
"That’s why I’m excited to announce Google I/O, a two day developer
gathering on May 28th & 29th in San Francisco. The purpose of the
event is to bring developers together to learn about products, tools,
and techniques which are moving the web forward as a platform."
"We've divided Google I/O into five topic areas: AJAX, APIs & Tools,
Social, Geo, and Mobile. There's, of course, a focus on Google
products, but the event won’t be limited to just Google APIs and
developer tools. There is a lot of knowledge about web development in
general at Google, and we’d like to share that expertise so that all
applications on the web get better."
"Over the two days, Google engineers and other leading software
developers will share their knowledge in breakout sessions, hands-on
Code Labs, and Q&A Fireside Chats."
http://google-code-updates.blogspot.com/2008/03/announcing-google-io.html

Google To Hold Web 2.0 Developer Event
March 11, 2008
"Google on Tuesday said it will hold a developer event in May covering
a variety of topics on Web 2.0 application development."
"Called Google I/O, the two-day event will be held May 28-29 at
Moscone Center in San Francisco. Along with covering topics in
application development in general, Google engineers will also discuss
the company's developer products."
"Among the topic areas Google plans to cover are tools and techniques
related to Ajax and JavaScript, both used in building user interfaces
for Web 2.0 applications. In addition, the company is expected to
discuss tools available for tapping into Web application programming
interfaces. Google will also cover its toolkit during this session."
"Other topics include the new wave of APIs and frameworks, such as
OpenSocial, for building applications to tap into social networks. On
the mobile side, Google engineers will tackle technologies such as
Android and Mobile Gears for building applications on the mobile Web."
"Finally, Google plans to cover geo and map applications, focusing on
technologies ranging from keyhole markup language to Google Maps API.
KML is an XML file format for managing the display of 3-D geospatial
data."
http://www.informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=206903012

Google Launches New Conference: Google "Insertion Order" for
Developers
March 11, 2008
"Google launched a new branded product today: the Google I/O Web
Forward developer conference, a two-day, event for developers to share
knowledge about Google's developer products in specific and Web
application development in general. For marketers, I/O means insertion
order; for developers, input/output."
"I/O (input/output) means communication between an information
processing system (i.e. computer), and the world – possibly a human,
or more likely in Google's scenario: an information processing system
(computer)."
"Google I/O will be held May 28--29 at the Moscone Center in San
Francisco. Five tracks will run simultaneously with several related to
local mobile search and social search."
http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/blog/080311-085037

Google I/O
http://code.google.com/events/io/

Google I/O FAQ
http://code.google.com/events/io/faq.html

Google Reader Accessibility Enhancements

ARIA For Google Reader: In praise of timely information access
March 12, 2008
"From time to time, our own T.V. Raman 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."
"The advent of RSS and ATOM feeds, and the creation of tools like
Google Reader for efficiently consuming content feeds, has vastly
increased the amount of information we access every day. From the
perspective of someone who cannot see, content feeds are one of the
major innovations of the century. They give me direct access to the
actual content without first having to dig through a lot of
boilerplate visual layout as happens with websites. In addition, all
of this content is now available from a single page with a consistent
interface."
"Until now, I've enjoyed the benefits of Google Reader using a custom
client. Today, we're happy to tell you that the "mainstream" Google
Reader now works with off-the-shelf screenreaders, as well as Fire
Vox, the self-voicing extension to Firefox. This brings the benefits
of content feeds and feed readers to the vast majority of visually
impaired users."
"Google Reader has always had complete keyboard support. With the
accessibility enhancements we've added, all user actions now produce
the relevant spoken feedback via the user's adaptive technology of
choice. This feedback is generated using Accessible Rich Internet
Applications (WAI-ARIA), an evolving standard for enhancing the
accessibility of Web-2.0 applications. WAI-ARIA is supported at
present by Firefox -- with future support forthcoming in other
browsers. This is one of the primary advantages of building on open
standards."
"We originally prototyped these features in Google Reader using the
AxsJAX framework. After extensive testing of these enhancements, we've
now integrated these into the mainstream product. See the related post
on the Google Reader Blog for additional technical details."
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/03/aria-for-google-reader-in-praise-of.html

Reader and ARIA: A new way to read
March 12, 2008
"We on the Reader team are delighted to have a guest post today from
Google usability expert T.V. Raman, who has announced on the Google
Blog that Reader now supports ARIA-powered screenreading. Our thanks
go out to T.V. and to Charles Chen, fellow Googler and creator of
FireVox, for their work in enabling more people than ever to benefit
from Reader."
"Spoken output support in Google Reader is implemented using
Accessible Rich Internet Applications (WAI-ARIA), an evolving standard
for enhancing the accessibility of Web-2.0 applications. WAI-ARIA is
supported at present by Firefox --- with future support forthcoming in
other browsers."
http://googlereader.blogspot.com/2008/03/reader-and-aria-new-way-to-read.html

About Fire Vox
"Fire Vox is an open source, freely available talking browser
extension for the Firefox web browser. Think of it as a screen reader
that is designed especially for Firefox."
http://firevox.clcworld.net/about.html

Accessible Rich Internet Applications (WAI-ARIA) Version 1.0
W3C Working Draft 4 February 2008
"Accessibility of Web content to people with disabilities requires
semantic information about widgets, structures, and behaviors, in
order to allow Assistive Technologies to make appropriate
transformations. This specification provides an ontology of roles,
states, and properties that set out an abstract model for accessible
interfaces and can be used to improve the accessibility and
interoperability of Web Content and Applications. This information can
be mapped to accessibility frameworks that use this information to
provide alternative access solutions. Similarly, this information can
be used to change the rendering of content dynamically using different
style sheet properties. The result is an interoperable method for
associating behaviors with document-level markup."
http://www.w3.org/TR/2008/WD-wai-aria-20080204/

AxsJAX - Access-Enabling AJAX
"AJAX techniques have helped Web developers create live applications
within Web browsers. The AxsJAX framework helps inject accessibility
features into these applications so that users of adaptive
technologies such as screen readers and self-voicing browsers
experience the same level of interactivity that is now taken for
granted by users of Web 2.0 applications."
http://code.google.com/p/google-axsjax/

YouTube and TiVo Get Together

YouTube and TiVo get together
March 12, 2008
"TiVo customers will be able to watch YouTube clips on their
television sets later this year."
"Alviso's TiVo said Wednesday it had worked out an agreement with
YouTube to access its clips through its broadband-connected digital
video recorders, that is, the TiVo Series3 and the new HD TiVo."
"It didn't disclose when the new service would launch."
"Customers will be able to search and watch YouTube videos, as well as
log into their YouTube account and access their favorite clips."
"TiVo is not the only set-top box to bring YouTube to the television
set. YouTube videos are also available through the Apple TV. Some
television makers are also developing sets that connect directly to
the Internet and services such as YouTube."
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/sfgate/detail?blogid=19&entry_id=24912

TiVo among adopters of YouTube tools
March 13, 2008
"Google's YouTube on Wednesday released tools that will let Web sites
more easily tap into its millions of Internet videos while also
converging them with television sets and video games."
"One of the more significant companies to say that they have embraced
the upgrade is TiVo which, within about six months, will make it
possible for users of many of its broadband-connected DVRs to view
YouTube video on TV screens."
"TiVo said that owners of its Series 3 and TiVo HD boxes will be able
to stream and bookmark favorite YouTube videos, but not store them as
if they were recorded TV shows."
"YouTube becomes one of about 40 partners that TiVo has lined up to
deliver Internet content to its DVRs, the most significant being
Amazon.com's Unbox digital movie service."
"TiVo said that its users have downloaded 16 million videos from its
40-odd partners."
"While there are 4 million TiVo subscribers, only 800,000 own stand-
alone, broadband-enabled TiVo boxes, and TiVo won't say how many of
those devices are the Series 3 and TiVo HD models."
"YouTube has a similar arrangement with Apple and its Apple TV set-top
box, though executives at Apple and YouTube won't say whether YouTube
videos are a popular draw or not."
"YouTube is the most popular video site on the Internet, according to
Nelsen//NetRatings, which reported 67.5 million unique users to the
site in the U.S. during January. Users post about 10 hours of video to
YouTube every second, according YouTube."
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/content_display/business/news/e3i0e7d8449d58e7ec1bf6d5c817d7ea3fe

Links:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/12/technology/12cnd-tivo.html
http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fpposted/archive/2008/03/12/tivo-in-youtube-tie-up-but-not-in-canada.aspx
http://www.bizjournals.com/eastbay/stories/2008/03/10/daily34.html
http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/4437891a28.html
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2008-03/13/content_7778678.htm
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5hSwri4kFohFzHEYiZkUrCZEqf-TQD8VC44182

YouTube Data API Update

YouTube APIs for developers and for... iguana enthusiasts
March 11, 2008
"We've just added upload, write, and authentication functionality to
the YouTube Data API. Brand new player APIs and tools are also now
available."
"That means that if, for example, you run a site just for iguana
enthusiasts, your users can upload videos of JubJub to their YouTube
accounts, post comments, create iguana playlists, and more, all
without leaving your site. And with the new player APIs and the new
chromeless player, you can completely customize and skin the YouTube
embedded player to match the look and feel of your site"
http://google-code-updates.blogspot.com/2008/03/youtube-apis-for-developers-and-for.html

Something to write home about
March 11, 2008
"Since the initial YouTube Data API launch back in August, the team
has been hard at work completing a whole suite of tools and features
to make it possible for you to fully integrate YouTube into your sites
and applications."
"Here's the sound byte: We now support upload, other write operations,
and internationalized standard feeds. (And there was much rejoicing!)
We're also introducing player APIs and a chromeless player -- a
barebones player SWF that's fully customizable and controllable using
the player APIs."
"The Java client library and the PHP client library (in the Zend
Framework 1.50RC2 release) have both been updated, as well as the
respective developer guides."
http://apiblog.youtube.com/2008/03/something-to-write-home-about.html

YouTube's Updated API Offers More Flexibility
March 12, 2008
"YouTube updated its API to include some major new features that will
help it become an even more interesting solution for publishers and
social networks."
"The first important addition is the support for authentication, which
now allows users to upload videos, edit metadata, post comments, rate
videos from other sites or from desktop applications. That means
someone could create a better interface for YouTube and leverage the
existing users and their data."
"Another useful API lets you control an embedded YouTube player using
JavaScript or ActionScript. As this example shows, you can pause a
video, skip to a certain frame, change the volume using some simple
code. YouTube no longer restricts you to use their player: the
chromeless player lets you add personalized controls, menus, but you
can't remove the branding."
http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2008/03/youtubes-updated-api-offers-more.html

YouTube tools to let web developers create their own YouTubes
March 12, 2008
"YouTube, Google Inc.'s popular video-sharing site, unveiled a new set
of tools for web developers on Wednesday that will allow them to
create YouTube videos on their own web pages."
"The video-sharing site said users and developers will have access to
YouTube's video library and the underlying video hosting and streaming
infrastructure."
"Writing on YouTube's blog, product manager Jim Patterson said the
move was part of a natural evolution for the website."
""YouTube has grown into much more than a website," he said. "It has
become an open, general purpose, video services platform, available
for use by just about any third-party website, desktop application, or
consumer device.""
"Users and web developers have been able to upload, embed and edit
videos onto YouTube and then host them on their own websites."
"The new tools, called APIs, or Application Programmer Interfaces,
allow users to access video and their YouTube accounts without leaving
their sites."
"They also let developers access "chromeless" video windows with the
play and pause button and YouTube logo removed, allowing developers to
rebrand the videos with their own logos."
http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2008/03/12/tech-youtube-open.html

YouTube APIs and Tools
http://code.google.com/apis/youtube/overview.html

YouTube JavaScript Player API Reference
http://code.google.com/apis/youtube/js_api_reference.html

YouTube Chromeless Player Reference
http://code.google.com/apis/youtube/chromeless_player_reference.html

YouTube Finds Its Way Into Spore

YouTube finds its way into Spore
March 12, 2008
"It's no secret that YouTube has embraced user generated video since
its inception. Armed with a video camera and an Internet connection,
anyone is able to contribute. We're seeing more and more videogames
starting to incorporate user generated content into the gaming
experience -- so we often ask ourselves, why not similarly empower
gamers to share their experiences with each other?"
"Enter Spore, the much anticipated game from Electronic Arts and
Maxis, which lets players create their own alien creatures, import
their creations into the game world, and upload video of their
creatures' moves directly to YouTube from within the game.
Additionally, all of the YouTube community can enjoy: Spore's own
YouTube Channel, which will showcase the most popular videos of
creatures fans and gamers create."
"The creature creator is core to the Spore game experience, and
seamlessly integrates with YouTube. It will be released within the
commercial game and as a standalone free download for PCs prior to the
game’s launch. We anticipate that millions of creatures will be
created, many of which will be cropping up on YouTube."
"Spore’s integration with YouTube was made possible using the latest
release of the YouTube Data API, which is now publicly available and
open to all developers. Here's a glimpse of what you can create"
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/03/youtube-finds-its-way-into-spore.html

YouTube
http://www.youtube.com/

Spore
http://www.spore.com/

Electronic Arts
http://www.ea.com/

Google Ad Manager

Our solutions for ad serving
March 13, 2008
"Earlier this week, we completed our acquisition of DoubleClick.
Together, we're now focused on building a full suite of products and
tools that help publishers of all sizes improve productivity, manage
their inventory, generate additional revenue opportunities and save
time so they can focus on what they do best -- creating great content
and delivering an exceptional experience to their users."
"Today, we're announcing a new tool for publishers with the beta
launch of Google Ad Manager. Directed at addressing the ad management
and serving needs of publishers with smaller sales teams, Google Ad
Manager is a free, hosted ad and inventory management tool that can
help publishers sell, schedule, deliver and measure their directly-
sold and network-based ad inventory. It offers an intuitive and simple
user experience with Google speed and a tagging process so publishers
can spend more time working with their advertisers and less time on
their ad management solution. And by providing detailed inventory
forecasts and tracking at a very granular level, Ad Manager helps
publishers maximize their inventory sell-through rates."
"Google Ad Manager effectively complements the DoubleClick Revenue
Center, which is focused on publishers with larger sales teams. We're
excited to add DART for Publishers to our suite of products, and we're
committed to the continued development and enhancement of
DoubleClick's offerings."
"As we are still in beta, Google Ad Manager is available to publishers
by invitation only. If you're interested in learning more about it or
would like to be considered for the program, visit the Google Ad
Manager site. Existing DoubleClick customers are not affected by this
announcement. As we expand the Google Ad Manager beta program, we will
be in touch again to include additional publishers and offer updates
on our progress."
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/03/our-solutions-for-ad-serving.html

Google Unveils First Post-DoubleClick Ad Product
March 13, 2008
"It looks like eager ad watchers anxious to see what Google's first
product from its DoubleClick acquisition would be got their answer
today."
"The product is called Ad Manager, and it's a free hosted service for
publishers to manage the ad inventories on their Web sites."
"Using DoubleClick's services, a business's sales team could manage
their ad inventories and fill any unsold space on their site. Small
sites with marginal sales staffs were often priced out of
DoubleClick's fee-based services, however."
"Sites that either sell their own ads or work with outside networks to
handle ad placement could use Ad Manager to fill unsold inventory,
with Google taking a slice of the revenue."
"In this way, Google would extend the reach of its AdSense network,
which now includes DoubleClick's DART for Publishers product."
"The announcement is part of Google's ambitious strategy to increase
the reach and revenue of its display advertising business. With the
regulatory review of the DoubleClick purchase concluded, Google plans
to move aggressively to improve its competitive position in the
display market, where it is still playing catch-up to AOL, Yahoo and
Microsoft."
http://www.internetnews.com/bus-news/article.php/3734146/Google+Unveils+First+PostDoubleClick+Ad+Product.htm

Control Your Own Advertising Empire With Google Ad Manager
March 13, 2008
"Google finally sealed the deal with advertising giant DoubleClick
earlier this week, and already the company is taking the wraps off a
new advertising application known as Google Ad Manager. Google Ad
Manager offers smaller sites an easy way to manage their own
advertising, similar to the way that DoubleClick's Revenue Center
handles large businesses."
"While Google AdSense offers fully automated ads based on your page’s
content, the new Google Ad Manager is designed to help you manage and
sell custom ads to companies of your choice."
"Think of Ad Manager as a dashboard for controlling your own ad
empire."
"At the moment Google Ad Manager is a private beta and available only
by invitation. You can head over to the new Ad Manager site and sign
up for an invite and also take a tour that offers some more details on
how the service will work."
http://blog.wired.com/monkeybites/2008/03/control-your-ow.html

Google Ad Manager BETA
"Google Ad Manager is a hosted ad management solution that can help
you sell, schedule, deliver, and measure all of your directly-sold and
network-based inventory."
http://www.google.com/admanager

Google Ad Manager Help Center
http://www.google.com/support/admanager/publisher/

Google Ad Manager Forum: Ad Manager Help
http://groups.google.com/group/admanager-help

Google Book Search Book Viewability API

Book info where you need it, when you need it
March 13, 2008
"Here at Google Book Search we love books. To share this love of books
(and the tremendous amount of information we've accumulated about
them), today we've released a new API that lets you link easily to any
of our books. Web developers can use the Books Viewability API to
quickly find out a book's viewability on Google Book Search and, in an
automated fashion, embed a link to that book in Google Book Search on
their own sites."
"As an example of the API in use, check out the Deschutes Public
Library in Oregon, which has added a link to "Preview this book at
Google" next to the listings in their library catalog. This enables
Deschutes readers to preview a book immediately via Google Book Search
so that they can then make a better decision about whether they'd like
to buy the book, borrow it from a library or whether this book wasn't
really the book they were looking for."
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/03/book-info-where-you-need-it-when-you.html

Preview books anywhere with the new Google Book Search API
March 13, 2008
"Today we announced the release of a new API for Book Search. We're
excited about this API because it makes it easy for users and other
book lovers to connect with Google Book Search through a myriad of
library sources, from their local library catalogs to their favorite
book sites."
"For example, using the API, a library can add a link to "View this
book in Google Book Search" next to every book entry in its catalog
for which we have a preview in our index. This means the library's
patrons, whether in the library or online at home, can preview the
book immediately via Google Book Search."
http://booksearch.blogspot.com/2008/03/preview-books-anywhere-with-new-google.html

Google Book Search Book Viewability API
What are the Google Book Search APIs?
"Google's mission is to organize the world's information and make it
universally accessible and useful. To help make the information we've
organized in Google Book Search more useful, we provide several
different ways to learn about Google's books and link to them."
Viewability API - Dynamic Links
"The Google Book Search Book Viewability API enables developers to:"
"Link to Books in Google Book Search using ISBNs, LCCNs, and OCLC
numbers"
"Know whether Google Book Search has a specific title and what the
viewability of that title is"
"Generate links to a thumbnail of the cover of a book"
"Generate links to an informational page about a book"
"Generate links to a preview of a book"
http://code.google.com/apis/books/

Google Book Search APIs Forum: booksearch-apis
http://groups.google.com/group/booksearch-apis

Google Book Search
http://books.google.com/

Google Sky

Space Jam
March 13, 2008
"Code Jam is one of our most famous traditions. Programmers compete to
hack and solve complex programming challenges in a very short time,
and the winners are awarded fame, cash prizes and the opportunity to
intern at Google."
"Diego Gavinowich from Buenos Aires was a finalist in our Latin
America Code Jam, and joined us for a winter internship three months
ago (missing summer break in Argentina!). Since he loves astronomy and
web hacking, we gave Diego a new Code Jam challenge: code a web
version of Google Sky by the end of his time with us."
"Well, he did it... with the help of other engineers jamming along on
their 20% time. We're very pleased to tell you that Google Sky is now
available on the web at sky.google.com. You can search for planets,
listen to Earth & Sky podcasts, watch some beautiful Hubble telescope
images, or explore historical maps of the sky from the comfort of your
browser."
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/03/space-jam.html

Google Sky
http://www.google.com/sky/

Google Using Log Data Against Search Worms

Using log data to help keep you safe
March 13, 2008
"We sometimes get questions on what Google does with server log data,
which registers how users are interacting with our services. We take
great care in protecting this data, and while we've talked previously
about some of the ways it can be useful, something we haven't covered
yet are the ways it can help us make Google products safer for our
users."
"While the Internet on the whole is a safe place, and most of us will
never fall victim to an attack, there are more than a few threats out
there, and we do everything we can to help you stay a step ahead of
them. Any information we can gather on how attacks are launched and
propagated helps us do so."
"That's where server log data comes in. We analyze logs for anomalies
or other clues that might suggest malware or phishing attacks in our
search results, attacks on our products and services, and other
threats to our users. And because we have a reasonably significant
data sample, with logs stretching back several months, we're able to
perform aggregate, long-term analyses that can uncover new security
threats, provide greater understanding of how previous threats
impacted our users, and help us ensure that our threat detection and
prevention measures are properly tuned."
"We can't share too much detail (we need to be careful not to provide
too many clues on what we look for), but we can use historical
examples to give you a better idea of how this kind of data can be
useful. One good example is the Santy search worm (PDF), which first
appeared in late 2004. Santy used combinations of search terms on
Google to identify and then infect vulnerable web servers. Once a web
server was infected, it became part of a botnet and started searching
Google for more vulnerable servers. Spreading in this way, Santy
quickly infected thousands and thousands of web servers across the
Internet."
"As soon as Google recognized the attack, we began developing a series
of tools to automatically generate "regular expressions" that could
identify potential Santy queries and then block them from accessing
Google.com or flag them for further attention. But because regular
expressions like these can sometimes snag legitimate user queries too,
we designed the tools so they'd test new expressions in our server log
databases first, in order to determine how each one would affect
actual user queries. If it turned out that a regular expression
affected too many legitimate user queries, the tools would
automatically adjust the expression, analyze its performance against
the log data again, and then repeat the process as many times as
necessary."
"In this instance, having access to a good sample of log data meant we
were able to refine one of our automated security processes, and the
result was a more effective resolution of the problem. In other
instances, the data has proven useful in minimizing certain security
threats, or in preventing others completely. In the end, what this
means is that whenever you use Google search, or Google Apps, or any
of our other services, your interactions with those products helps us
learn more about security threats that could impact your online
experience. And the better the data we have, the more effectively we
can protect all our users."
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/03/using-log-data-to-help-keep-you-safe.html

Search Worms
by Niels Provos, Joe McClain, Ke Wang
ABSTRACT
"Worms are becoming more virulent at the same time as operating system
improvements try to contain them. Recent research demonstrates several
effective methods to detect and prevent randomly scanning worms from
spreading [2, 13]. As a result, worm authors are looking for new ways
to acquire vulnerable targets without relying on randomly scanning for
them. It is often possible to find vulnerable web servers by sending
carefully crafted queries to search engines. Search worms1 automate
this approach and spread by using popular search engines to find new
attack vectors. These worms not only put significant load on search
engines, they also evade detection mechanisms that assume random
scanning. From the point of view of a search engine, signatures
against search queries are only a temporary measure as many different
search queries lead to the same results. In this paper, we present our
experience with search worms and a framework that allows search
engines to quickly detect new worms and take automatic
countermeasures. We argue that signature-based filtering of search
queries is ill-suited for protecting against search worms and show how
we prevent worm propagation without relying on query signatures. We
illustrate our approach with measurements and numeric simulations."
3.1 MyDoom
"MyDoom is a worm that propagates via email. The email claims to be
from a company’s support department and contains an executable file as
an attachment. When a user executes it, the worm gets activated and
searches the local hard disk for email addresses of other users to
infect. As a result, the worm propagates along the social network of
the infected users. MyDoom.O improves on previous versions of MyDoom
by increasing its branching factor. Instead of relying only on email
addresses found locally, MyDoom.O uses the domain names of email
addresses to search for more email addresses on Internet search
engines. It first started spreading on July 26th, 2004 and managed to
infect about 60,000 hosts in less than 8 hours. MyDoom.O used the
following search engines, weighted by their respective probabilities:
Google (45%), Lycos (22.5%), Yahoo (20%) and Altavista (12.5%)."
3.2 Santy
"The Santy worm surfaced on December 20th, 2004 and is the first
search worm to propagate automatically, without any human intervention
[3]. It is written in Perl and exploits a bug in the phpBB bulletin
system that allows an adversary to run arbitrary code on the web
server. To find vulnerable servers to infect, it uses Google to search
for URLs that contain the string viewtopic.php. To infect a web
server, Santy appends an exploit against phpBB2 to each URL extracted
from the search results. The exploit instructs the web server to
download the Santy worm from a central distribution site. Once the
worm has been started, it asks the search engine for more vulnerable
sites. In addition to the worm itself, all variants also download
another payload connecting the infected machine to an IRC bot
network."
6. CONCLUSION
"Worms no longer infect their targets by randomly scanning the
Internet. They now also take advantage of the huge amount of
information collected by search engines and spread by querying a
search engine for new targets to infect. To demonstrate that this is a
real problem, we have presented our experience with two different
search worms: MyDoom.O and Santy. We have shown that signature
generation in conjunction with anomaly detection can prevent a worm
from overloading a search engine but that the approach is not
effective in preventing a worm from spreading. We argue that a
signature-based approach is ill-suited against search worms, as many
different search queries can lead to the same result. That is, even
after signatures have been applied to block a particular variant of a
search worm, it is easy for adversaries to find queries that
circumvent existing signatures."
"To deal with this problem, we propose a solution that is query
independent and classifies web pages as vulnerable if they belong to
an exploitable server or contain potential infection targets. If a
search query generates too many vulnerable results, we can detect that
the search query belongs to a search worm and remove vulnerable
results before showing them to the user. This approach is CPU
efficient as it relies on pre-computation and is independent of the
actual query."
http://www.citi.umich.edu/u/provos/papers/search_worms.pdf

WORM 2006
The 4th Workshop on Recurring Malcode (WORM)
http://www.eecs.umich.edu/~farnam/worm2006.html

Search worms
Proceedings of the 4th ACM workshop on Recurring malcode
http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?doid=1179542.1179544

Papers Written by Googlers
http://research.google.com/pubs/papers.html

YouTube Awards 2007

Vote for the YouTube Awards
March 17, 2008
"We're thrilled to say that the second annual YouTube Awards are now
live and ready for your vote. This year we've added five new
categories: Short Film, Political, Sports, Eyewitness, and
Instructional, for a total of 12. So head over to our YouTube Video
Awards channel to start watching and voting for some of the videos
that defined '07."
"You can vote once per day (though you may not change your vote on the
same day) and you have until 11:59pm PT this coming Wednesday, March
19th, to do so. We'll announce the winners on Friday, March 21st, at
which point we'll feature them on this page and invite them to a
special YouTube gathering later this year."
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/03/vote-for-youtube-awards.html

The YouTube Awards Are Back!
March 13, 2008
"In 2007, we witnessed an explosion of ideas and creativity on
YouTube. You showed us that online video is not just a way to share
pet and baby videos (though it is certainly good for that, too), but
rather it can be so much more: a showcase for aspiring artists, a
megaphone for everyday people, a way to learn new skills and even to
change the political process."
"In recognition of all of these vibrant uses of and communities on
YouTube, we expanded the awards this year to include five new
categories -- Best Short Film, Best Political Video, Best Sports
Video, Best Eyewitness Video, and Best Instructional Video – for a
total of 12. Each category now has six nominees instead of 10 (a
special nod to those of you with short attention spans)."
"You'll also notice that the structure of the awards and the way
voting works look a little different this year. Every time you refresh
the page, the order of the categories and the featured thumbnail
change in a random order so there can be no bias in the way the
content is viewed or presented."
"As you might imagine, whittling down any category to six videos was a
gargantuan task and already we'll say we're sorry to the
hundreds/thousands of deserving content creators who didn't get
nominated. But you can't exactly blame us - you made these videos
memorable and helped them rise to the top of the YouTube charts. The
nominees reflect some of the most buzzed-about videos on the site,
particularly the ones you bookmarked to watch later (and presumably
again and again)."
http://www.youtube.com/blog?entry=YXJYpx0EKEs

YouTube Awards 2007
http://www.youtube.com/ytawards07

YouTube Picasa APIs Hackathon

YouTube / Picasa Web Albums APIs Hackathon at the 'plex
March 17, 2008
"As promised in my last post announcing the new YouTube developer
offerings, we're hosting a hackathon for the YouTube and Picasa Web
Albums APIs at the Googleplex on March 27th, 2008."
"We'll give overviews of both APIs, go over new features, and run some
codelabs to get you started. If you're already familiar with both the
APIs, stop by to meet the teams, ask questions, and find other
developers to work on projects with."
"There will be two sessions -- one from 3PM - 6:30PM and another from
6:30PM - 10PM. Feel free to stay the whole day, or just come for the
session you have time for. Don't worry about food and caffeine --
we've got you covered."
http://google-code-updates.blogspot.com/2008/03/youtube-picasa-web-albums-apis.html

YouTube / Picasa APIs Hackathon
"Google will be holding a hackathon to get you started on the YouTube
and Picasa Web Albums APIs! We will be doing short introductions, then
some codelabs. Meet the YouTube and Picasa teams, ask questions, and
meet other local developers. Bring your laptops and come hangout at
Google. Food will be provided."
http://code.google.com/events/hackathons/ytpicasa.html

YouTube APIs and Tools
http://code.google.com/apis/youtube/overview.html

Picasa Web Albums Data API
http://code.google.com/apis/picasaweb/overview.html

Google Charts API Update

Google Charts API Update
March 19, 2008
"Google updated their charts API, which they first released back in
December 2007. First of all, the old limit of 50,000 queries per user
per day has been removed (though Google asks you email them if you
receive more than 250,000 queries a day so they can better scale
this)."
"Also, there are several extended or new features. Among them are
radar charts, sparklines, and maps. The last one is perhaps the most
interesting, as it lets you display and color a map."
http://blogoscoped.com/archive/2008-03-19-n48.html

Lifting the limit on calls to the Google Chart API
March 18, 2008
"We got a lot of feedback after releasing the Google Chart API in
early December. By far the most questions were about the limit of
50,000 queries per user per day. Some of you who are webmasters of
larger sites are afraid of overstepping this limit. We've heard your
concerns, and have decided to drop that limit altogether."
"However, should you expect to regularly cause more than 250,000
queries per day to the Google Chart API, we'd like you to let us know
by mailing chart-api-notifications@google.com so that we can plan for
the demand."
"And with that said, from now on, if your site can't handle the
Slashdot effect, it shouldn't be because of the Google Chart API. ;)"
"But why did we impose a query limit to start with? It was there to
ensure that we could provide a reliable service for all legitimate
users because we were able to lock out malicious users."
"We work hard to provide reliable services, and even have a specific
team of site reliability engineers (SRE) dedicated to keeping our
services up and running (as well as fast). I cover the Chart API for
SRE. A very important part of an SRE's work is capacity planning,
because only a service with sufficient capacity can serve reliably and
with low latency. For a new service, planning the capacity is
naturally very hard, because there are a lot of unknown contributing
variables. That's why we started with a quite conservative query
limit. Now, that we've had the public API running for some time, we've
collected enough experience to feel comfortable raising that limit
without jeopardizing the service's reliability."
http://google-code-updates.blogspot.com/2008/03/lifting-limit-on-calls-to-google-chart.html

Google Chart API
http://code.google.com/apis/chart/

Google Chart API FAQ
http://code.google.com/support/bin/topic.py?topic=13605

Google Chart API forum
http://groups.google.com/group/google-chart-api

Google for Non-Profits

Google for Non-Profits
March 18, 2008
"Many of you spend your days making this world a better place, and we
want to do our part to help. Today, we're excited to launch Google For
Non-Profits, a one-stop shop for tools to help advance your
organization's mission in a smart, cost-efficient way."
"This site features ideas and tutorials for how you can use Google
tools to promote your work, raise money and operate more efficiently.
And to get inspired, you'll also find examples of innovative ways
other non-profits are using our products to further their causes."
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/03/google-for-non-profits.html

Google for Non-Profits
"You are changing the world. We want to help."
"Learn how to use free Google tools to promote your work, raise money,
and operate more efficiently."
http://www.google.com/nonprofits/

Google Visualization API

Opening Google Docs to users and developers via Gadgets and
Visualization API
March 19, 2008
"today we're starting a new path to better enable developers to
customize and build on top of Google Docs with two new tools we are
releasing today: Gadgets-in-Docs and the Visualization API."
"Instead of delivering just one or two new types of reports, or a new
visual map mashup (can you ever get enough of those?), we decided to
deliver a platform on which anyone, not just Google, could build the
next best thing. We even invited a few developers to try this with us,
and they join us in this launch by featuring just a few of their
creations, like Panorama's pivot table, or ViewPath's Gantt Chart, or
Infopath's Funnel Charts -- all great tools for the student and
enterprise user alike. We also built a few early gadgets ourselves
which you might find useful."
"We borrowed the Gadgets-in-Docs concept from the iGoogle team, so
it's only fitting that you can also publish your spreadsheet gadgets
to iGoogle, where you can see your data-based-Gadget right next to all
that other stuff that's important to you (even if it is just a picture
of your dog)."
"To try it out, go into Google Docs and open up a spreadsheet. Click
on the chart icon, and click 'Gadget...'. Pick your gadget, customize
it to fit your data, and then publish it out to iGoogle or to any
webpage."
"If you're a developer and want to reach millions of people with your
latest creation, check out the Google Visualization API, courtesy of
our visualization team engineers. The Visualization API provides a
platform that can be used to create, share and reuse visualizations
written by the developer community. It provides a common way (an API)
to access structured data sources, the first being Google
spreadsheets."
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/03/opening-google-docs-to-users-and.html

Introducing the Google Visualization API
March 19, 2008
"when we acquired Gapminder last year, we were excited by the
opportunity to use Gapminder's powerful visualization techniques to
bring new life and usefulness to Google datasets. And we were not
alone -- the web is home to a vibrant community of developers who
build amazing visualization applications."
"With the community in mind, we're please to introduce the Google
Visualization API, which is designed to make it easier for a wide
audience to make use of advanced visualization technology"
"This launch is in tandem and in cooperation with the Google Docs
team, who just announced support for gadgets and the Visualization API
in spreadsheets. This includes a set of gadgets created by Google and
several other companies, including some that add pivoting, grouping,
and other new functionality to your spreadsheets. You can see all of
those in our 'featured' list within the visualization gallery, which
includes the Gapminder Motion Chart that has proven especially popular
among within Google."
http://google-code-updates.blogspot.com/2008/03/introducing-google-visualization-api.html

Gapminder
http://www.gapminder.org/

Google Docs
http://docs.google.com/

iGoogle
http://www.google.com/ig

Google Visualization API Gadget Gallery
http://code.google.com/apis/visualization/documentation/gadgetgallery.html

Google Visualization API
"What is the Google Visualization API?"
"The Google Visualization API lets you access multiple sources of
structured data that you can display, choosing from a large selection
of visualizations. The Google Visualization API also provides a
platform that can be used to create, share and reuse visualizations
written by the developer community at large."
"Embed visualizations directly into your website: Display attractive
data on your website by choosing from a vast array of visualizations
created by the developer community."
"Write, share and reuse: The Google Visualization API provides simple
Gadget extensions to its API to create visualization Gadgets. Publish
these here or in the Gadget directory."
"Create extensions to Google products: Write visualization
applications for Google products such as Google Docs."
"Use many data sources, one API: Visualization apps created using the
API are able to access any compliant data source with no required code
changes to your application. Developers can start building apps
immediately using Google Spreadsheets as a supported data source."
http://code.google.com/apis/visualization/

Google Visualization API FAQ
http://code.google.com/support/bin/topic.py?topic=14181

Google Visualization API forum
http://groups.google.com/group/google-visualization-api

Google AJAX Language API

New Google AJAX Language API - Tools for translation and language
detection
March 20, 2008
"The API helps developers automatically translate content in their
applications. Users on these sites will have an easier time
communicating across lingual boundaries."
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/03/new-google-ajax-language-api-tools-for.html

Google’s AJAX Translation API
March 20, 2008
"Google has just released a new AJAX API which allows developers to
easily add machine translation capabilities to their websites. Using
the Google AJAX Language API, you can detect the language of a piece
of text and translate it into any of the supported Google Translate
languages."
"As a simple example, you can translate the first few paragraphs of
this post into Arabic, Chinese (Simplified or Traditional), Dutch,
French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Russian or
Spanish using the drop down at the end of the post (assuming you have
JavaScript enabled in your browser)."
http://blogoscoped.com/archive/2008-03-20-n87.html

Google releases AJAX Translation API
March 20, 2008
"Google has been releasing lots of API’s lately — their latest is the
AJAX Translation API. What does that mean? Webmasters can now let
users do on-the-fly translations and language detection. One
interesting example might be a comment box on a blog that immediately
throws an warning message when a user tries to post something in a
language other than English. Or, even more interesting, have comments
be automatically translated to English so the majority of readers can
understand the comment."
http://blogs.zdnet.com/Google/?p=976

Google Translate API
March 20, 2008
"Google launched another AJAX API, this time for language detection
and translation. The API works for the same language pairs that are
available at Google Translate and lets you display the translation of
a text inside your own page, without having to link to an external
translation service."
"The translation API could be used to automatically translate some
content from a web page using the browser's preferred language, to
create a Greasemonkey script that translates to English the posts
written in other languages, to detect if a comment is written in
English before posting it and for many other things."
http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2008/03/google-launched-another-ajax-api-this.html

Google Translate
http://translate.google.com/

Google AJAX Language API
"What is the Google AJAX Language API?"
"With the AJAX Language API, you can translate and detect the language
of blocks of text within a webpage using only Javascript."
"The language API is designed to be simple and easy to use to
translate and detect languages on the fly when offline translations
are not available. We plan on adding more exciting capabilities to the
AJAX Language API in the future, so stay tuned."
http://code.google.com/apis/ajaxlanguage/

Yahoo Supports OpenSocial

Yahoo to Support OpenSocial
March 25, 2008
"Yahoo seems to be all about openness lately (Open Search, support for
OpenID), so the announcement that the company intends to support
Google's OpenSocial initiative shouldn't surprise anyone. OpenSocial
is an API for writing social applications that work across multiple
sites and many social networks started to work on implementing it:
MySpace, hi5, orkut."
"OpenSocial Foundation has a web site that uses the recently launched
Google Sites. The foundation will make OpenSocial more neutral and
closer to becoming a web standard."
"Two weeks ago, MySpace launched a gallery for OpenSocial apps, hi5
will officially open its platform on March 31st, while orkut has
delayed the launch. Hopefully, this is the first step from a bigger
initiative of making social networks more open and less self-
centered."
http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2008/03/yahoo-to-support-opensocial.html

Announcing the OpenSocial Foundation
March 25, 2008
"it’s pretty clear that the social part of the Internet is becoming
more and more important to people. From chat to games to messaging to
sharing things like news, entertainment, pictures, maps, movies and
other “favorites,” users are looking for more ways to give contacts a
sense of who they are and what they’re into. As social applications
take the mash-up world by storm, a growing number of companies and
data sources are opening up to give people the information they want,
and developers are scrambling to create new applications that connect
users with friends and colleagues."
"Yahoo! has always been about helping users find and share information
online, and we love giving our broad and loyal developer community the
tools they need to keep innovating on this front. Their echo our
passion for creating the best Web experience for our users."
"In this same spirit, we announced today that we’ve joined forces with
Google and MySpace to create the OpenSocial Foundation, and will also
begin supporting the OpenSocial standard. Industry consortiums such as
this often start slowly and evolve over time. So far, OpenSocial is
rapidly growing and adapting, but still in the early stages. We feel
that this is the right step at this stage in its evolution. It’s no
longer a trial balloon — it’s for real. We are taking this opportunity
to help ensure websites and developers feel confident using OpenSocial
as the building blocks for their new social apps."
"We already offer Web services and APIs through the Yahoo! Developer
Network that make it easy for developers to build applications and
mashups that integrate data sources in new ways. We think OpenSocial
will continue to fuel this innovation and make the Web more relevant
and more enjoyable to millions."
"We can only imagine the possibilities of what creative developers and
publishers will do with these tools. Stay tuned for more on how we’ll
be supporting OpenSocial and driving the OpenSocial Foundation to
create an open and increasingly social Web."
http://ycorpblog.com/2008/03/25/announcing-the-opensocial-foundation/

Yahoo! supports OpenSocial; Yahoo!, MySpace and Google to form non-
profit OpenSocial Foundation
March 25, 2008
"Yahoo!, MySpace, and Google today announced they have agreed to form
the OpenSocial Foundation to ensure the neutrality and longevity of
OpenSocial as an open, community-governed specification for building
social applications across the web.  Yahoo!’s support of OpenSocial
and role as a founding member of the new foundation are landmarks for
the rapidly growing specification which will now offer developers the
potential to connect with more than 500 million people worldwide."
"The OpenSocial Foundation will be an independent non-profit entity
with a formal intellectual property and governance framework; related
assets will be assigned to the new organization by July 1, 2008.  The
foundation will provide transparency and operational guidelines around
technology, documentation, intellectual property, and other issues
related to the evolution of the OpenSocial platform, while also
ensuring all stakeholders share influence over its future direction."
"The OpenSocial Foundation website at www.opensocial.org will serve as
the portal for the community to find all information about OpenSocial
and the foundation as they evolve.  Developers and website owners can
now visit www.opensocial.org for the latest specifications, links to
other resources, and the opportunity to get involved."
http://www.google.com/intl/en/press/pressrel/20080325_opensocial.html

OpenSocial continues to grow: Welcome, Yahoo!
March 25, 2008
"Last November, OpenSocial was created to help build infrastructure
for the social web. OpenSocial provides a common mechanism for
developers to easily hook into many different social networks and
extend their functionality. Sites including MySpace and orkut have
begun to provide OpenSocial applications to their users, and hi5 will
be rolling out next week."
"Today we're pleased that Yahoo! has announced its support for
OpenSocial. We're looking forward to having Yahoo! users join the
hundreds of millions of people who will soon enjoy OpenSocial
applications. This addition means even more distribution for
developers, encourages participation by even more websites, and, most
importantly, results in more features for users all across the web."
"In addition, Yahoo!, MySpace, and Google are joining with the broader
community to create a non-profit foundation to foster the continued
open development of OpenSocial. To that end, we've also launched
OpenSocial.org, designed to become the main documentation hub and
primary source of information about OpenSocial."
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/03/opensocial-continues-to-grow-welcome.html

An OpenSocial Foundation
March 25, 2008
"Today we are pleased to announce that Google is joining together with
Yahoo! and MySpace in the creation of a non-profit foundation for the
open and transparent governance of the OpenSocial specifications and
intellectual property. This foundation, modeled after the community-
led and industry-supported OpenID Foundation, will seek to ensure that
the technology behind OpenSocial remains implementable by all, freely
and without restriction, in perpetuity. The establishment of the
foundation is a necessary and exciting next step toward an open model
for application syndication via an increasingly socially-enabled
Internet, and we invite and encourage your involvement as we complete
this process over the next several months."
"Additionally we are pleased to be a part of the launch of
opensocial.org, the new official home for the OpenSocial
specifications and developer community. While we are still in the
early stages of putting the new site together, we wanted to open the
site and the process immediately for community feedback and review."
"So please join us, Yahoo!, MySpace, and all of the other OpenSocial
containers and application providers, in extending a warm welcome to
the community in a spirit of collaboration and rapid iteration, as we
move forward with the establishment of the OpenSocial Foundation and
look ahead to the continued growth of the social web."
http://google-code-updates.blogspot.com/2008/03/opensocial-foundation.html

OpenSocial Foundation Proposal
"This document proposes the creation of a non-profit, private
foundation dedicated to the sustainable and open development of the
OpenSocial initiative and related intellectual property.  This
document will be used as a starting point for creating the charter of
such a foundation, along with its structure, policies, and procedures,
and its responsibilities for supporting the ongoing development of the
technology."
http://sites.google.com/a/opensocial.org/opensocial/OpenSocial-Foundation-Proposal

OpenSocial.org
http://opensocial.org/

Picasa Button API

Add your own buttons to Picasa, upload photos all over the Web
March 26, 2008
"If you've ever wanted to make your favorite software or website work
with Google's Picasa software, there's a new Picasa Button API that
lets you add your own buttons to the desktop interface."
"These buttons can send files to other applications on your PC, --
this tutorial (.zip) shows how to send files to Adobe Photoshop CS3 --
and they can also upload photos and movies to websites of your
choice."
"I'm most excited about our Web Uploader API. It uses a protocol we
developed for posting photos to Blogger a couple years ago, and it
shows a web-based preview of what you're going to upload before you
send it. Using the web uploader, you can make user interfaces that
feel more like sending an email and less like "Wait an hour to
upload..." Picasa can also resize files before sending, saving time."
"Also because these new buttons can be made by anyone, it means that
there's no job too small for a Picasa button. You could make a button
for your personal blog or for your major photo hosting service. See
our demo video, which features Smugmug."
http://google-code-updates.blogspot.com/2008/03/add-your-own-buttons-to-picasa-upload.html

Picasa Button and Web Uploader APIs video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1IGCbH6hLRA

Picasa Button API
http://code.google.com/apis/picasa/docs/button_api.html

Picasa Web Uploader API
http://code.google.com/apis/picasa/docs/web_uploader.html

Picasa APIs
http://code.google.com/apis/picasa/

Picasa APIs forum
http://groups.google.com/group/google-picasa-apis

Google: Earth Hour

The Black Google Homepage
March 29, 2008
"Google's homepage is black for the users from United States, United
Kingdom, Ireland, Canada and Denmark to promote Earth Hour, an event
that encourages energy conservation. "On Saturday, March 29, 2008,
Earth Hour invites people around the world to turn off their lights
for one hour – from 8:00pm to 9:00pm in their local time zone. (...)
Given our company's commitment to environmental awareness and energy
efficiency, we strongly support the Earth Hour campaign, and have
darkened our homepage today to help spread awareness of what we hope
will be a highly successful global event," explains Google in a
special page created for the event. Earth Hour started last year in
Sydney, but this year many cities from all over the world joined the
event."
http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2008/03/black-google-homepage.html

Google: Earth Hour
"Google users in the United States will notice today that we "turned
the lights out" on the Google.com homepage as a gesture to raise
awareness of a worldwide energy conservation effort called Earth Hour.
As to why we don't do this permanently - it saves no energy; modern
displays use the same amount of power regardless of what they display.
However, you can do something to reduce the energy consumption of your
home PC by joining the Climate Savers Computing Initiative."
"On Saturday, March 29, 2008, Earth Hour invites people around the
world to turn off their lights for one hour – from 8:00pm to 9:00pm in
their local time zone. On this day, cities around the world, including
Copenhagen, Chicago, Melbourne, Dubai, and Tel Aviv, will hold events
to acknowledge their commitment to energy conservation."
http://www.google.com/intl/en/earthhour/

Google App Engine

Developers, start your engines
April 7, 2008
"We just launched a preview release of Google App Engine, a way for
developers to run their web applications on Google's infrastructure.
In the same way that Blogger made it easy to create a blog, Google App
Engine is designed from the ground up to make it easy to create and
run web applications."
"With Google App Engine, developers can write web applications based
on the same building blocks that Google uses, like GFS and Bigtable.
Google App Engine packages those building blocks and provides access
to scalable infrastructure that we hope will make it easier for
developers to scale their applications automatically as they grow.
This means they can spend less time dealing with system administration
and maintenance, and more time building and improving their
applications. (There's more detail on the new App Engine Blog.)"
"Google App Engine is free to use during the preview release, but the
amount of computing resources any app can use is limited. In the
future, developers will be able to purchase additional computing
resources as needed, but Google App Engine will always be free to get
started."
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/04/developers-start-your-engines.html

Introducing Google App Engine + our new blog
April 7, 2008
"At tonight's Campfire One we launched a preview release of Google App
Engine -- a developer tool that enables you to run your web
applications on Google's infrastructure. The goal is to make it easy
to get started with a new web app, and then make it easy to scale when
that app reaches the point where it's receiving significant traffic
and has millions of users."
"Google App Engine gives you access to the same building blocks that
Google uses for its own applications, making it easier to build an
application that runs reliably, even under heavy load and with large
amounts of data."
"During this preview period, applications are limited to 500MB of
storage, 200M megacycles of CPU per day, and 10GB bandwidth per day.
We expect most applications will be able to serve around 5 million
pageviews per month. In the future, these limited quotas will remain
free, and developers will be able to purchase additional resources as
needed."
http://googleappengine.blogspot.com/2008/04/introducing-google-app-engine-our-new.html

What Is Google App Engine?
"Google App Engine lets you run your web applications on Google's
infrastructure. App Engine applications are easy to build, easy to
maintain, and easy to scale as your traffic and data storage needs
grow. With App Engine, there are no servers to maintain: You just
upload your application, and it's ready to serve your users."
"You can serve your app using a free domain name on the appspot.com
domain, or use Google Apps to serve it from your own domain. You can
share your application with the world, or limit access to members of
your organization."
"App Engine costs nothing to get started. Sign up for a free account,
and you can develop and publish your application for the world to see,
at no charge and with no obligation. A free account can use up to
500MB of persistent storage and enough CPU and bandwidth for about 5
million page views a month."
"During the preview release of Google App Engine, only free accounts
are available. In the near future, you will be able to purchase
additional computing resources."
The Application Environment
"Google App Engine makes it easy to build an application that runs
reliably, even under heavy load and with large amounts of data. The
environment includes the following features:"
"• dynamic web serving, with full support for common web technologies"
"• persistent storage with queries, sorting and transactions"
"• automatic scaling and load balancing"
"• APIs for authenticating users and sending email using Google
Accounts"
"• a fully featured local development environment that simulates
Google App Engine on your computer"
"Google App Engine applications are implemented using the Python
programming language. The runtime environment includes the full Python
language and most of the Python standard library."
"Although Python is currently the only language supported by Google
App Engine, we look forward to supporting more languages in the
future."
http://code.google.com/appengine/docs/whatisgoogleappengine.html

Google App Engine
http://appengine.google.com/

Google App Engine Blog
http://googleappengine.blogspot.com/

Google App Engine forum
http://groups.google.com/group/google-appengine

Google App Engine: Download the Google App Engine SDK
http://code.google.com/appengine/downloads.html

Google App Engine: Developer's Guide
"Welcome to Google App Engine! This developer's guide contains
everything you need to know to build scalable web applications using
Google technology."
http://code.google.com/appengine/docs/

Google App Engine: Getting Started
"This tutorial describes how to develop and deploy a simple project
with Google App Engine. The example project, a guest book,
demonstrates how to use several App Engine services, including the
datastore and the Google user service."
http://code.google.com/appengine/docs/gettingstarted/

Google App Engine: Applications Gallery
http://appgallery.appspot.com/

Developing and deploying an application on Google App Engine
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bfgO-LXGpTM

Google Campfire One
http://code.google.com/campfire/

Google Code
http://code.google.com/

Google Apps
http://www.google.com/a

Google Talk Labs Edition

Google Talk Labs Edition
"Download Google Talk Labs Edition and get:"
"Features of the Google Talk Gadget on your desktop (emoticons, group
chat, and more!)"
"New! Desktop notifications from the following services: Gmail,
Calendar (with a new snooze option!), Orkut"
http://www.google.com/talk/labsedition/index.html

Google Talk Labs Edition FAQ
"What is Google Talk, Labs Edition?"
"Google Talk, Labs Edition is an experimental release of the Google
Talk client. It has many of the same great features as the Google Talk
Gadget, including instant messaging, emoticons, and group chat. Google
Talk, Labs Edition also comes with new desktop notifications from
Calendar, Orkut, and Gmail."
"Some features from the original Google Talk client are missing. What
happened to them?"
"Google Talk, Labs Edition is an experimental release that brings some
of the great features of the Google Talk Gadget to the desktop. Some
features like voice calling and file transfer from the Google Talk
client did not make it into this version. If you need to use voice
calling or file transfer, you can download the original Google Talk
client"
"I can't tell the difference between the Labs and non-Labs Talk icons
in my systray! What do I do?"
"We recommend only using the Google Talk client OR Google Talk, Labs
Edition at any one time. You can tell them apart by hovering your
mouse over the icon for a few seconds - the name ("Google Talk" or
"Google Talk, Labs Edition") will appear."
"What does "Allow Google Talk, Labs Edition to collect anonymous usage
statistics" mean?"
""Usage statistics" refers to information automatically sent to Google
to help us figure out how well the Google Talk, Labs Edition is
working and help us improve it in future versions."
"This includes technical information such as the number of
notifications received and the frequency Google Talk, Labs Edition
features are used. These statistics don't include information such as
your name or your email address. Google collects this data in
aggregate and uses it according to our Privacy Policy to improve our
products and services."
"During the installation process, we give you the option to help us
improve Google Talk, Labs Edition by sending usage statistics. If you
elect to send this information but later change your mind, you can
disable this feature from the options menu in the system tray."
"I love/hate feature X/Y! Who do I contact?"
"We'd love to hear from you! Please email us at
labs+googletalk@google.com"
http://www.google.com/talk/labsedition/faq.html

Google Labs
http://labs.google.com/

Google Gadget Center

Gadgets for a cause
April 8, 2008
"Now any campaign or organization with a live website can use the
Gadget Builder for organizations to quickly create a gadget. You can
drive traffic from your gadget on iGoogle to your website and help
your organization be seen and heard on this new platform. Your gadget
could feature news from your organization, blog updates, a YouTube
video channel, polls, trends, speeches, and more. You can submit your
gadget to the iGoogle directory and drive additional usage of your
gadget from your website."
"By making content accessible on iGoogle, organizations can engage
supporters, reach undecided voters, and provide information to the
uninformed. All you need to get started is access to a publicly
available server where you can host your gadget files. If you already
have a gadget, make sure it's in the appropriate category, for
instance Politics or News. If you don't have a gadget yet, it only
takes a few minutes to get started."
"For more details on gadget creation, visit the Google Gadget Center."
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/04/gadgets-for-cause.html

Google Gadget Builder for organizations
http://www.google.com/webmasters/gadgets/promo/election.html
http://www.google.com/webmasters/gadgets/promo/builder.html

Google Gadget Center
"Building a gadget that people will want to see everyday requires
thoughtful planning. Our 3-step process – Create, Promote, and Track &
Optimize – will guide you through all the steps needed to make your
gadget a success."
http://www.google.com/webmasters/gadgets/about/index.html

Google Gadget Center: Create your gadget
http://www.google.com/webmasters/gadgets/about/create.html

Google Gadget Center: Promote your gadget
http://www.google.com/webmasters/gadgets/about/promote.html

Google Gadget Center: Track and optimize your gadget
http://www.google.com/webmasters/gadgets/about/track.html

Promote Your Website's Content Using Google Gadgets
"In the United States, one of every five visits to the Google homepage
goes to iGoogle. You can put your content on iGoogle and on other
pages across the Internet for free by creating and promoting your own
Google Gadgets. After iGoogle users add your gadget to the iGoogle
page, they will see your content every time they visit Google. But not
every gadget has lots of users, and it's very easy for people to
delete gadgets they've added. In order to optimize your gadgets so the
greatest number of people will try them out and keep using them over
time, you should make sure your gadgets are well-designed. This
document contains tips for optimizing your Google Gadgets."
http://www.google.com/webmasters/gadgets/guidelines.html

Google Gadget Maker
http://www.google.com/ig/gmchoices?source=gdha

Google Gadgets Editor
http://code.google.com/apis/gadgets/docs/gs.html#GGE

Google Gadgets Creator Page
http://code.google.com/apis/gadgets/docs/publish.html#PageCreator

Google Gadgets For Your Webpage
http://www.google.com/ig/directory?synd=open&source=gapi

Enhance your webpage with free Google Gadgets
http://www.google.com/webmasters/gadgets/foryourpage/index.html
http://www.google.com/ig/directory?synd=open&source=gghx

Google Gadgets for Your Page
http://www.google.com/webmasters/gadgets/

Google Gadgets for your page FAQ
http://code.google.com/support/bin/topic.py?topic=10043

Google Gadget Directory
http://www.google.com/ig/directory

What are Google Gadgets?
"Google Gadgets are simple HTML and JavaScript mini-applications
served in iFrames that can be embedded in webpages and other apps."
Simple to build
"Built-in JavaScript libraries make it easy to create gadgets that
include tabs, Flash content, persistent storage, dynamic resizing, and
more. Use the Google Gadgets Editor to build gadgets quickly and
easily."
Multiple sites
"Your gadget can run on multiple sites and products including iGoogle,
Google Maps, Orkut, or any webpage. Write your gadget once, and with
minor changes it can run in multiple places."
Reach millions of users
"Many gadgets are viewed millions of times per week and generate
significant traffic for their authors. When users add your gadget to
their iGoogle homepage for instance, they'll see your content each
time they visit Google."
http://code.google.com/apis/gadgets/index.html

Google Gadget Ventures
"Develop new gadgets with support from Google."
"Google Gadget Ventures is a new Google pilot program dedicated to
helping developers create richer, more useful Google Gadgets. Inspired
by the success of iGoogle, which has been driven by the creation by
3rd-party developers of a broad range of gadgets, Gadget Ventures
provides two types of funding:"
"Grants of $5,000 to those who’ve built gadgets we’d like to see
developed further. You’re eligible to apply for a grant if you’ve
developed a gadget that’s in our Google gadgets directory and gets at
least 250,000 weekly page views. To apply, you must submit a one-page
proposal detailing how you’d use the grant to improve your gadget."
"Seed investments of $100,000 to developers who’d like to build a
business around the Google gadgets platform. Only Google Gadget
Venture grant recipients are eligible for this type of funding.
Submitting a business plan detailing how you plan to build a viable
business around the gadgets platform is a required part of the seed
investment application process."
http://www.google.com/gadgetventures/

Google Gadget Ads
"Gadget ads enable advertisers and agencies to engage audiences on the
Internet's largest ad network with a rich and interactive new ad
format."
http://www.google.com/adwords/gadgetads/

Does my account have Google Gadget Ads?
"You may not be able to create gadget ads in your own AdWords account
just yet. Gadget ads require a high level of technical resources to
create, and generally also require a high level of support from the
AdWords support team. To avoid confusion for users, and to make sure
we have appropriate levels of support, gadget ads are currently
enabled for a limited number of AdWords advertisers who have created
content-rich ads in the past."
"If gadget ads are enabled in your account, you will have received an
invitation to create gadget ads from the Google support team. If you
haven't received this notice, don't despair: We expect to offer Google
Gadget Ads to other advertisers in the future as the launch
progresses."
http://adwords.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=74807&hl=LANG

Google Gadgets: Developer's Guide
http://code.google.com/apis/gadgets/docs/dev_guide.html

Google Gadgets: API Overview
http://code.google.com/apis/gadgets/docs/overview.html

Google Gadgets API FAQ
http://code.google.com/support/bin/topic.py?topic=10027

Official Google Gadgets API Blog
http://googlegadgetsapi.blogspot.com/

Google Gadgets API forum
http://groups.google.com/group/Google-Gadgets-API

Google Code
http://code.google.com/

Links:

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/02/share-love-with-igoogle.html
http://gspy.blogspot.com/2008/01/google-gadget-center-launched.html
http://www.googlewatchblog.de/2008/01/19/google-gadget-center/
http://blogoscoped.com/forum/118137.html#id118137
http://forums.searchenginewatch.com/showthread.php?t=20623

Google WHOIS OneBox Returns

The Return of Google’s WHOIS OneBox
April 18, 2008
"Last month, Philipp compiled a list of lost Google features, at the
top of which was a reference to the WHOIS OneBox feature that Google
added for a brief period back in January 2004. Well, that OneBox is
now back:"
"By entering a search phrase like [whois google.com] you can quickly
see when the domain’s WHOIS record was created and when the domain
will expire above the search results. (Somewhat ironically, it doesn’t
actually tell you to whom the domain belongs though.)"
"Google implies it’s getting this information from the Domain Tools
website, which is linked to from the OneBox result title too. However,
it seems the data being displayed is not coming live from the WHOIS
record, so Google must be caching the information somewhere."
http://blogoscoped.com/archive/2008-04-18-n27.html

Google WHOIS OneBox
April 18, 2008
"Google shows a special OneBox when you search for "whois", followed
by a domain name: for example, [whois google.com]. The OneBox shows
the date when a certain domain was created and date when it will
expire. It seems that the only provider of information for this OneBox
is Domain Tools."
"Google launched a similar feature four years ago, but it was removed
really fast because it scraped data from Network Solutions without
permission. "Google quietly launched a service allowing visitors to
look up data on domain name owners from public databases -
collectively known as Whois - run by registrars worldwide. Although
largely unpromoted, the service generated enough traffic to surpass
Network Solutions' (NSI's) daily Whois use limits, which aim to stop
spammers and other undesirables from harvesting information about its
customers.""
http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2008/04/google-whois-onebox.html

The Return of Google's WHOIS Feature
April 19, 2008
"Google had launched an application in January 2004 called WHOIS, that
was later withdrawn. However, now according to Matt Cutts, the WHOIS
feature has been released again."
"By entering a simplistic web address such as whois google.com, a user
would be able to know the creation and the expiration date of the
domain."
"However, as of now the WHOIS data is not being sent in real time and
it would mean that Google must be caching the information from some
other source."
http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2008/04/19/the-return-of-googles-whois-feature

Example:

http://www.google.com/search?q=whois+google.com

Links:

http://searchengineland.com/080418-182623.php
http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/nice-news-quote-feature/

Google Friend Connect

A friend connected web
May 12, 2008
"Have you ever wished you could share information and interact with
friends while visiting some of your favorite websites? There are a
number of great social networking sites out there that let you stay
connected, but the rest of the web typically hasn't been social. Yet."
"Site owners have been saying for a while that they would love to
provide this functionality, but, frankly, it's been too hard to add
social features. A lot of code has to be written to create a site
where visitors can sign up and bring their friends along, form new
friendships, and do engaging things together. And not to mention that
if you're a site visitor, it's pretty inconvenient to create a new
account and try to rebuild a network of friends each time you visit a
site."
"Enter Google Friend Connect. This new service, announced as a preview
release tonight at Campfire One, lets non-technical site owners
sprinkle social features throughout their websites, so visitors will
easily be able to join with their AOL, Google, OpenID, and Yahoo!
credentials. You'll be able to see, invite, and interact with new
friends or, using secure authorization APIs, with existing friends
from social sites on the web like Facebook, Google Talk, hi5,
LinkedIn, orkut, Plaxo, and others. And quite simply, you'll be able
to do things together."
"Having faces show up at a site is not enough. Friend Connect lets
site owners include OpenSocial apps made by a world of developers.
We're providing a few apps, such as posts and ratings, to get the ball
rolling. And many more will be provided by the OpenSocial community."
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/05/friend-connected-web.html

Google Friend Connect
"Google Friend Connect lets you grow traffic by easily adding social
features to your website. With just a few snippets of code, you get
more people engaging more deeply with your site."
"Attract more visitors. Visitors bring along friends from social
networks like Facebook, orkut, and others to interact on your site."
"Enrich your site with social features. Choose engaging social
features from a catalog of gadgets provided by Google and the
OpenSocial developer community."
"No programming whatsoever. Just copy and paste snippets of code into
your site, and Google Friend Connect does the rest."
"Please note: this is a preview release. Google Friend Connect is
being made available to a limited number of site owners as it
approaches general availability. If you are interested in
participating, please fill out this short form. You will be notified
if you are approved as a partner."
http://www.google.com/friendconnect/

More info about Google Friend Connect
http://www.google.com/friendconnect/home/moreinfo

OpenSocial
"OpenSocial defines a common API for social applications across
multiple websites. Built from standard JavaScript and HTML, developers
can create apps with OpenSocial that access a social network's friends
and update feeds. By using a common API, developers can extend the
reach of their applications more quickly, yielding more functionality
for users."
http://sites.google.com/a/opensocial.org/opensocial/Home

Google And IPv6

Looking towards IPv6
May 13, 2008
"We care a lot about the health of the Internet. Recently, we've
become increasingly concerned that IPv4 addresses — the numbers that
computers use to connect to the Internet — are running out. Current
projections place IPv4 address space exhaustion somewhere in late
2011, and while technologies such as Network Address Translation (NAT)
can offer temporary respite, they complicate the Internet's
architecture, pose barriers to the development of new applications,
and run contrary to network openness principles."
"That's why we're pleased to let you know that Google search is also
available over IPv6 at ipv6.google.com (you'll need an IPv6 connection
to view it). While IPv4 provides about four billion IP addresses — not
enough to assign one to every one of Earth's more than six billion
inhabitants — IPv6 provides enough address space to assign almost
three billion networks to every person on the planet. We hope that by
allowing every computer and mobile device on the network to talk to
each other directly — an idea known as the "end-to-end principle" that
was crucial to the original design of the Internet — IPv6 will allow
the continued growth of the Internet and enable new applications yet
to be invented."
"With current operating systems such as Windows Vista, Mac OS X, and
Linux providing high-quality support for IPv6, we hope it's only a
matter of time before IPv6 is widely deployed. We will be doing our
part."
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/05/looking-towards-ipv6.html

Google IPv6
http://ipv6.google.com/

Google Treasure Hunt 2008

Google Treasure Hunt
May 8, 2008
"The Google Engineering team is launching its first ever Treasure Hunt
- a contest designed to challenge your problem-solving skills.
Starting soon, we'll be releasing the first of four puzzles, drawing
from computer science, networking, and low-level UNIX trivia. Each
puzzle will be posted online week by week, and the first entrants to
submit correct answers to each question will receive a prize."
"With each puzzle, we'll also be featuring one of our worldwide
offices. The contest will run for four weeks, and you will get a
virtual glimpse into our Mountain View, Sydney, and San Francisco
offices."
"Below is the clue that you'll need to decode to get to the URL with
more details. In the meantime, stay tuned here for directions and
updates. And of course, to preserve fairness, no Google employees
allowed :)"
"Arrrrrrrr you ready? Onward to the first puzzle, matey! And good
luck!"
"aHR0cDovL3RyZWFzdXJlaHVudC5hcHBzcG90LmNvbS8="
"Soon :). 1210550400"
http://google-au.blogspot.com/2008/05/google-treasure-hunt.html

Google Treasure Hunt update
May 17, 2008
"Avast, matey! As announced on the Google Australia blog, we've
launched Treasure Hunt — a puzzle contest designed to test yer
problem-solving skills in computer science, networking, and low-level
UNIX trivia. You'll find the first of four brainteasers at
http://treasurehunt.appspot.com/. A new puzzle will be posted every
week for the next three weeks, and a few lucky gobs to submit correct
answers to every question will receive a prize."
"The second puzzle will be appearing soon — to be exact, 936266827
seconds before Y2K38, so keep yer eyes open. We'll also be
highlighting our Mountain View mother ship, so step smartly, lads and
lasses, and good luck!"
"In case ye missed out on the first week's puzzle, it's still
available, so 'tis not too late! ARR! (Can you tell we can hardly wait
to Talk Like a Pirate?)"
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/05/google-treasure-hunt-update.html

Google Treasure Hunt 2008
http://treasurehunt.appspot.com/

Google Health

Google Health
http://www.google.com/health/

Google Health Help Center
http://www.google.com/support/health/

About Google Health
"Google Health allows you to store and manage all of your health
information in one central place. And it's completely free. All you
need to get started is a Google username and password."
"Google believes that you own your medical records and should have
easy access to them. The way we see it, it's your information; why
shouldn't you control it?"
"Keep your doctors up-to-date"
"Stop filling out the same paperwork every time you see a new doctor"
"Avoid getting the same lab tests done over and over again because
your doctor cannot get copies of your latest results"
"Don't lose your medical records because of a move, change in jobs or
health insurance"
https://www.google.com/health/html/about/

Google Health Terms of Service
"2. Not Medical Advice; U.S. Use Only"
"Google Health does not offer medical advice. Any content accessed
through Google Health is for informational purposes only, and is not
intended to cover all possible uses, directions, precautions, drug
interactions, or adverse effects. This content should not be used
during a medical emergency or for the diagnosis or treatment of any
medical condition. Please consult your doctor or other qualified
health care provider if you have any questions about a medical
condition, or before taking any drug, changing your diet or commencing
or discontinuing any course of treatment. Do not ignore or delay
obtaining professional medical advice because of information accessed
through Google Health. Call 911 or your doctor for all medical
emergencies"
"4. Use of Your Information"
"If you create, transmit, or display health or other information while
using Google Health, you may provide only information that you own or
have the right to use. When you provide your information through
Google Health, you give Google a license to use and distribute it in
connection with Google Health and other Google services. However,
Google may only use health information you provide as permitted by the
Google Health Privacy Policy, your Sharing Authorization, and
applicable law. Google is not a "covered entity" under the Health
Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 and the
regulations promulgated thereunder ("HIPAA"). As a result, HIPAA does
not apply to the transmission of health information by Google to any
third party."
"6. Content and Services Accessed through Google Health"
"Google may make third-party services available through Google Health.
In order to use a specific service, you may choose to allow the third
-party service provider to retrieve, provide, and/or modify health and
other information in your account or otherwise share your information
with the service provider. Once you enable a specific third-party
service provider to access your account, the service provider may
continue to access your account until you affirmatively disable
access. Third-party service providers include both health care
providers and other entities. It is your sole responsibility to review
and approve each such third-party service before sharing your
information through or otherwise accessing it."
https://www.google.com/health/html/terms.html

Google Malware Diagnostics Pages

Does a Site Have Malware? Google Provides Diagnosis
May 23, 2008
"Google put up a new* malware diagnosis service; just append any
domain – your domain or another site you want to check on – to the end
of the URL “google.com/safebrowsing/diagnostic?site=", or paste a
domain in the box below, and you will find an overview page listing
potential problems like trojans or exploits (or the result may be
telling you the site is OK)."
http://blogoscoped.com/archive/2008-05-23-n62.html

Google Anti-Malware Diagnostic Pages
May 23, 2008
"ZDNet's security blog points to an update to Google's malware
warnings. Like McAfee SiteAdvisor, now each web site has a special
diagnostic page that lists answers to four questions:"
"1. What is the current listing status?"
"2. What happened when Google visited this site?"
"3. Has this site acted as an intermediary resulting in further
distribution of malware?"
"4. Has this site hosted malware?"
"Here's, for example, the diagnostic page for google.com:
http://www.google.com/safebrowsing/diagnostic?site=google.com, which
lists some interesting facts."
http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2008/05/google-anti-malware-diagnostic-pages.html

Google introducing Safe Browsing diagnostic to help owners of
compromised sites
May 22, 2008
"Last week, Google’s Niels Provos made an announcement regarding a
newly introduced feature aiming to help owners of compromised sites in
understanding the implications of the compromise, as well as the
malicious events that took place when Google last indexed the site."
"These are some of the key benefits that I’ve already found highly
effective in my investigative assessments."
"- despite that the data is kept for 90 days only, even a three months
period of time with a snapshot of the malicious activity that’s been
going on at a particular domain is handy when conducting assessments,
especially in those cases where the compromise has already been
detected by the site owner, and the malicious links/scripts removed"
"- the feature’s investigative and relationship establishing nature in
the sense of listing other sites compromised by the same malicious
domain, as well as the domains where the malware was hosted acting as
redirection points in this case, easily allow you to see the big
picture from different angles regarding a particular malware group or
an incident"
"- the endless possibilities for automation and integration of the
data thanks to the Safe Browsing API, as well as the possibility to
use the service as a early warning system for security incidents"
http://blogs.zdnet.com/security/?p=1170

Safe Browsing Diagnostic To The Rescue
May 15, 2008
"We've been protecting Google users from malicious web pages since
2006 by showing warning labels in Google's search results and by
publishing the data via the Safe Browsing API to client programs such
as Firefox and Google Desktop Search. To create our data, we've built
a large-scale infrastructure to automatically determine if web pages
pose a risk to users. This system has proven to be highly accurate,
but we've noted that it can sometimes be difficult for webmasters and
users to verify our results, as attackers often use sophisticated
obfuscation techniques or inject malicious payloads only under certain
conditions. With that in mind, we've developed a Safe Browsing
diagnostic page that will provide detailed information about our
automatic investigations and findings."
"The Safe Browsing diagnostic page of a site is structured into four
different categories:"
"1. What is the current listing status for [the site in question]?"
"We display the current listing status of a site and also information
on how often a site or parts of it were listed in the past."
"2. What happened when Google visited this site?"
"This section includes information on when we analyzed the page, when
it was last malicious, what kind of malware we encountered and so
fourth.   To help web masters clean up their site, we also provide
information about the sites that were serving malicious software to
users and which sites might have served as intermediaries."
"3. Has this site acted as an intermediary resulting in further
distribution of malware?"
"Here we provide information if this site has facilitated the
distribution of malicious software in the past. This could be an
advertising network or statistics site that accidentally participated
in the distribution of malicious software."
"4. Has this site hosted malware?"
"Here we provide information if the the site has hosted malicious
software in the past. We also provide information on the victim sites
that initiated the distribution of malicious software."
"All information we show is historical over the last ninety days but
does not go further into the past.   Initially, we are making the Safe
Browsing diagnostic page available in two ways.  We are adding a link
on the interstitial page a user sees after clicking on a search result
with a warning label, and also via an "additional information" link in
Firefox 3's warning page."
http://googleonlinesecurity.blogspot.com/2008/05/safe-browsing-diagnostic-to-rescue.html

Goosh

Goosh
"Goosh goosh.org 0.4.3-beta #1 Mon, 02 Jun 08 22:28:01 UTC
Google/Ajax"
"Welcome to goosh.org - the unofficial google shell."
"This google-interface behaves similar to a unix-shell."
"You type commands and the results are shown on this page."
"goosh is written by Stefan Grothkopp <grothkopp@gmail.com>"
"it is NOT an official google product!"
http://goosh.org/

Goosh, a Google Command Line
June 2, 2008
"Goosh.org hosts an unofficial Google interface which “behaves similar
to a unix-shell,” as the author Stefan Grothkopp explains. For
instance, entering n disney will result in a Google News search for
the keyword “disney”. Type help to see some of the other available
commands, like lucky (an “I’m feeling lucky” search), wiki (a
Wikipedia search), blogs, or video. Note this project is not the first
try at a Google command line utility, though one previous such site I
know of seems to be down now."
http://blogoscoped.com/archive/2008-06-02-n49.html

Google Map Maker

Google Map Maker
http://www.google.com/mapmaker

Google Map Maker Getting Started Guide
"Google Map Maker is a Google Maps service that allows you add or edit
features, such as roads, businesses, parks, schools and more. Using
Google Map Maker tools, you can visually mark locations and add
detailed information about these locations. Once you have submitted
content, this information may be edited by other users or moderators.
At a later time, this content may be published in Google Maps for
others to see and use."
http://www.google.com/mapmaker/mapfiles/s/support.html

Google Map Maker FAQ
http://www.google.com/mapmaker/mapfiles/s/faq.html

Google Map Maker Moderation Guidelines
http://www.google.com/mapmaker/mapfiles/s/guidelines.html

Google Map Maker Terms of Service
http://www.google.com/mapmaker/mapfiles/s/terms_mapmaker.html

Google Map Maker - Privacy Policy
http://www.google.com/mapmaker/mapfiles/s/privacy_mapmaker.html

Google Protocol Buffers

Google Protocol Buffers
"Protocol Buffers are a way of encoding structured data in an
efficient yet extensible format. Google uses Protocol Buffers for
almost all of its internal RPC protocols and file formats."
http://code.google.com/p/protobuf/

Protocol Buffers Documentation
http://code.google.com/apis/protocolbuffers/docs/overview.html

Protocol Buffers: Our open source data interchange format
July 7, 2008
"Today we have something special for all you coders: we're releasing
one of our most widely-used internal development tools. We call it
"Protocol Buffers." It's the way we encode almost any sort of
structured information which needs to be passed across the network or
stored on disk. We thought Protocol Buffers might be useful to other
people, too, so we've decided to release it as open source software.
Check out the details on the Google Open Source Blog, or head directly
to the project page on Google Code."
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/07/protocol-buffers-our-open-source-data.html

Protocol Buffers: Google's Data Interchange Format
July 7, 2008
"At Google, our mission is organizing all of the world's information.
We use literally thousands of different data formats to represent
networked messages between servers, index records in repositories,
geospatial datasets, and more. Most of these formats are structured,
not flat. This raises an important question: How do we encode it all?"
"XML? No, that wouldn't work. As nice as XML is, it isn't going to be
efficient enough for this scale. When all of your machines and network
links are running at capacity, XML is an extremely expensive
proposition. Not to mention, writing code to work with the DOM tree
can sometimes become unwieldy."
"Do we just write the raw bytes of our in-memory data structures to
the wire? No, that's not going to work either. When we roll out a new
version of a server, it almost always has to start out talking to
older servers. New servers need to be able to read the data produced
by old servers, and vice versa, even if individual fields have been
added or removed. When data on disk is involved, this is even more
important. Also, some of our code is written in Java or Python, so we
need a portable solution."
"Do we write hand-coded parsing and serialization routines for each
data structure? Well, we used to. Needless to say, that didn't last
long. When you have tens of thousands of different structures in your
code base that need their own serialization formats, you simply cannot
write them all by hand."
"Instead, we developed Protocol Buffers. Protocol Buffers allow you to
define simple data structures in a special definition language, then
compile them to produce classes to represent those structures in the
language of your choice. These classes come complete with heavily-
optimized code to parse and serialize your message in an extremely
compact format. Best of all, the classes are easy to use: each field
has simple "get" and "set" methods, and once you're ready, serializing
the whole thing to – or parsing it from – a byte array or an I/O
stream just takes a single method call."
"OK, I know what you're thinking: "Yet another IDL?" Yes, you could
call it that. But, IDLs in general have earned a reputation for being
hopelessly complicated. On the other hand, one of Protocol Buffers'
major design goals is simplicity. By sticking to a simple lists-and-
records model that solves the majority of problems and resisting the
desire to chase diminishing returns, we believe we have created
something that is powerful without being bloated. And, yes, it is very
fast – at least an order of magnitude faster than XML."
"And now, we're making Protocol Buffers available to the Open Source
community. We have seen how effective a solution they can be to
certain tasks, and wanted more people to be able to take advantage of
and build on this work. Take a look at the documentation, download the
code and let us know what you think."
http://google-opensource.blogspot.com/2008/07/protocol-buffers-googles-data.html

Lively

Be who you want on the web pages you visit
July 8, 2008
"I'm excited to announce today's release of Lively by Google - a 3D
virtual experience that is the newest addition to Google Labs."
"The Lively team wants to help people experience another dimension of
the web. We hope you will use the product to express yourself with and
without words, and to do this in the places you already visit on the
web."
"If you enter a Lively room embedded on your favorite blog or website,
you can immediately get a sense of the room creator's interests, just
by looking at the furniture and environment they chose. You can also
express your own personality by customizing your avatar's look,
showing people who you are without having to say a word. Of course,
you can chat with each other, and you can also interact through
animated actions."
"To learn more about Lively, please visit www.lively.com. We’re eager
to hear your feedback. Maybe we'll bump into you in one of our rooms!"
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/07/be-who-you-want-on-web-pages-you-visit.html

Google Releases 3D World Lively
July 9, 2008
"Google just released Lively, a 3D world where you can chat with
others and create your own rooms. Traces of this program appeared back
in 2007 under the name of My World (this project also received the
rumor nickname Google metaverse; TomHTML, Tony and I also lately saw
traces of something called Google Rooms, though we aren’t 100% sure
it’s related). After installing the desktop setup for Windows – yes,
this is one of the rare Google products which isn’t completely
browser-based – you’ll be forwarded to lively.com again. There, you
can pick from a number of available rooms, and sign-in with your
Google account."
"I experienced a couple of problems with this service right now; from
odd user name restrictions (I ended up re-selecting my Google ID name,
even though they asked me to pick a new name at first), to very slow
loading (I mostly saw skeletons at first), to finally, a program crash
(the message “Lively has encountered a problem and an error report has
been sent” appeared and the program closed). These may be launch
problems, though, and nothing permanent... we’ll see."
"Once you logged into a room, you can start customizing your avatar.
First you can pick from a base type – like male, female or animal –
and then you can fine-tune your hair, skin color, eyes and more. You’
ll then see yourself surrounded by other avatars, and there’s
background music and lots of laughing, grunting and other noises. The
graphic has a lighthearted cartoon touch, reminiscent of something
like a Lucasarts 3D game. When you talk by using the chat box at the
bottom, your words appear as speech bubble above your character."
"You can then move around by kind of dragging your avatar (clicking
your avatar switches to self-navigation mode, and clicking outside it
switches to camera navigation). This may be an unusual mode of
navigation at first, but after some seconds it works very well."
http://blogoscoped.com/archive/2008-07-09-n11.html

Google unveils a Lively virtual world
July 8, 2008
"As if Google didn't have a strong enough hold on the planet already,
today it's launching its own world -- a virtual world, to be exact.
Lively, which Google likes to call a "virtual experience," allows you
to create an avatar, decorate your own virtual room, invite friends to
your room and do things you've always dreamed of, like blow up oil
barrels on a deserted island."
"Unlike popular virtual worlds such as Second Life, Lively doesn't
require you to download new software. All you need is a browser plug-
in. The service is also more distributed than Second Life: Its rooms
will live on Web pages on Facebook and other sites, so you might
stumble across them when browsing the Internet. Rooms can be private
spaces, with entry by invitation only, or open-topic rooms, where you
can meet people interested in discussing topics you love, like
Angelina Jolie, Jennifer Aniston or Google. It also ties into other
Google services. You can stream YouTube videos into your virtual
living room or post your Picasa pictures on your walls."
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2008/07/google-unveils.html

Google Tackles Virtual Reality With 'Lively'
July 8, 2008
"Virtual reality is a little 2006, but Google is looking to give it a
new spin with Lively, a new 3D 'world' that can be integrated with a
number of online applications."
"The Lively download is available now on Lively.com. Users can create
"rooms" that can be embedded on blogs or Web sites and explored via
avatars you create yourself."
"It is currently only available for Windows XP and Vista users using
Internet Explorer or Firefox. You'll need a video card with at least
32 MB of video memory, Flash 9 or higher, and a broadband Internet
connection."
"Users must be at least 13 years old to participate, and those under
18 must get a parent or guardian's permission before joining, Google
said."
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2325144,00.asp

Google Launches Lively; Second Life in a Google Environment
July 8, 2008
"Google has just launched its own 3D Virtual World called Lively. Of
course the first thing that would come into our mind upon reading “3D
Virtual World” is none other than Second Life, with all its avatars
and avatar interactions among members. Although Google’s Lively may
look and feel like Second Life, it is no where near its rich 3D
environment. But it is understandable though since Lively is still in
Google Labs, so we expect more features and enhancements later on."
"Currently Google’s Lively allows users to create their own avatars,
their avatars’ rooms, customize their avatars with their own photos
and videos (yes, it does support YouTube video embedding), and embed
their Lively virtual rooms into blogs and websites."
"Members can chat with other avatars they see on rooms they visit or
visitors to their own room. They can also add these avatars into their
contacts as well as keep tracks of their friends through the Lively
virtual environment."
"Google’s Lively looks to be a promising web product and has the
potential for another advertising venue for Google once it becomes
viral and attain the same level of popularity and usage as that of
Second Life."
"As for Second Life, Google Lively is free and that makes it a
possible threat."
http://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-launches-lively-second-life-in-a-google-environment/7256/

Lively New Virtual World From Google
July 8, 2008
"In a way it's very un-Google. The new Lively 3D "virtual world" that
launched today is perhaps another run at social networking after the
mixed experience of Orkut (popular in Brazil and India, among a few
other places). Apparently aimed at teens and even tweens, cutting
their virtual teeth on sites like Webkinz and Club Penguin, Lively is
apparently the product of the long-rumored Google Metaverse project.
It's only available for PC at the moment."
"I spent some time with it this afternoon and found it relatively easy
to use and engaging, although there's slight a learning curve. A nice,
fairly in-depth discussion of the mechanics of Lively is on Google
Blogoscoped. There's considerable customization built around avatars
and rooms, which can be exported in the form of widgets. Users can
enter each others' rooms and interact/chat with one another. You can
also embed and watch YouTube videos within Lively."
"Unlike Second Life, the service is entirely free. Lively is likely to
be immediately popular. Coincidentally, another 3D social network,
Vivaty, launched this morning with an emphasis on Facebook (Coke and
Target are sponsors). There are numerous other competitors and there
has been considerable VC money flowing into the over-hyped "virtual
world" segment."
"Beyond comparing the now proliferating virtual worlds on features,
it's worth asking why Google is doing this. As I said in the
beginning, this effort is quite far removed from Google's mission to
"organize the world's information.""
"One could take the cynical view and see it as an effort to further
develop the burgeoning "in-game" advertising market. In 2006 Google
acquired the in-game ad company AdScape. Alternatively it could be
seen as a product to appeal to the youth market (and later offer
demographic advertising and sponsorships accordingly). But it may
equally be a product of the creativity of a number of Google engineers
who just thought it would be "cool.""
http://searchengineland.com/080708-215216.php

Prereqs & Supported Systems: Run Requirements
"To run Lively, you'll need a decent video card (one with at least 32
MB of video memory). All video cards made in the last three years
should work."
"You'll also need to run Lively on a Windows XP of Vista (with admin
privileges to install). We don't support Mac or Linux (yet)."
http://www.lively.com/help/bin/answer.py?answer=93894&topic=13361

Lively
http://www.lively.com/

Lively Rooms
http://www.lively.com/rl

Lively Catalog
http://www.lively.com/catalog

Lively Help Center
http://www.lively.com/help/

Lively Forum
http://groups.google.com/group/lively-help

Google Knol

Google Knol
"A knol is an authoritative article about a specific topic."
http://knol.google.com/

Introduction to Knol
"The Knol project is a site that hosts many knols — units of knowledge
— written about various subjects. The authors of the knols can take
credit for their writing, provide credentials, and elicit peer reviews
and comments. Users can provide feedback, comments, related
information. So the Knol project is a platform for sharing
information, with multiple cues that help you evaluate the quality and
veracity of information."
"Knols are indexed by the big search engines, of course. And well-
written knols become popular the same as regular web pages. The Knol
site allows anyone to write and manage knols through a browser on any
computer."
http://knol.google.com/k/knol/knol/Help#

Google Knol's Orkut community
http://www.orkut.co.in/Community.aspx?cmm=16576078

Knol is open to everyone
July 23, 2008
"A few months ago we announced that we were testing a new product
called Knol. Knols are authoritative articles about specific topics,
written by people who know about those subjects. Today, we're making
Knol available to everyone."
"The web contains vast amounts of information, but not everything
worth knowing is on the web. An enormous amount of information resides
in people's heads: millions of people know useful things and billions
more could benefit from that knowledge. Knol will encourage these
people to contribute their knowledge online and make it accessible to
everyone."
"The key principle behind Knol is authorship. Every knol will have an
author (or group of authors) who put their name behind their content.
It's their knol, their voice, their opinion. We expect that there will
be multiple knols on the same subject, and we think that is good."
"With Knol, we are introducing a new method for authors to work
together that we call "moderated collaboration." With this feature,
any reader can make suggested edits to a knol which the author may
then choose to accept, reject, or modify before these contributions
become visible to the public. This allows authors to accept
suggestions from everyone in the world while remaining in control of
their content. After all, their name is associated with it!"
"Knols include strong community tools which allow for many modes of
interaction between readers and authors. People can submit comments,
rate, or write a review of a knol. At the discretion of the author, a
knol may include ads from our AdSense program. If an author chooses to
include ads, Google will provide the author with a revenue share from
the proceeds of those ad placements."
"We are happy to announce an agreement with the New Yorker magazine
which allows any author to add one cartoon per knol from the New
Yorker's extensive cartoon repository. Cartoons are an effective (and
fun) way to make your point, even on the most serious topics."
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/07/knol-is-open-to-everyone.html

Google's Wikipedia competitor, Knol, was opened to the public on
Wednesday morning
July 24, 2008
"So-called knols are articles about specific topics written by experts
on that subject."
"Google is partnering with The New Yorker magazine to allow any author
to add a cartoon from the magazine to their knol. Knol authors can run
ads with them, as well, and receive a cut of the revenue from Google."
"What makes Knol different from Wikipedia is that every knol will have
an author, or group of authors, whose name is prominent."
"People can submit comments, and rate and review knols. Authors can
choose to close their knol so that no-one else can edit it, make it
completely open to others to edit — like a wiki — or keep the default
"moderated collaboration" mode, in which the author selects which
edits to allow."
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/internet/0,1000000097,39452060,00.htm

Google takes aim at Wikipedia with paid alternative
July 23, 2008
"Google hopes to knock Wikipedia off its perch as the pre-eminent
"community encyclopaedia" by releasing its own compendium of articles
about every possible topic."
"The search giant today released Knol, a service which encourages any
user to write articles as an "expert" on any subject - from fly-
fishing to Byzantine architecture or even how to install a sink."
"There is no vetting process, although readers can rate articles - as
they can rank stories on the "social news" service Digg. Authors can
also elect to have advertising on their articles, and share in the
revenue from the adverts, which will be placed by Google's ad-serving
platform, AdSense."
"Unlike Wikipedia, readers will not be free to edit articles, though
the ranking system will mean that those 'knols' which are popular will
fare better in searches conducted on the Knol home page. Knol entries
will also appear in regular Google searches, but their ranking will be
determined in the usual way - according to how many other web pages
link to them."
"A source close to Google said the service was not designed to be a
Wikipedia-killer. A better way to think of it would be as a platform
for pages more like blogs, the source said, but instead of being
updated all the time, the entries were a chance for publishers to
share their expertise."
"Internet experts said the service was unlikely to compete with
Wikipedia - which now contains more than seven million articles in 200
languages - because it would be a platform for opinion, rather than
factual content."
"Whereas on Wikipedia, multiple anonymous writers help to create a
single entry on dinosaurs, say, on Knol, several "dinosaur experts"
could each contribute an entry and vie to create the most popular
dinosaur page, entitling them to a greater share of dinosaur-related
advertising revenue."
"Knol is, however, likely to attract some users from similar services
such as Squidoo, which has the slogan "Everyone's an expert on
something" and is visited by six million people a month, and Videojug,
a similarly themed service based on video content, which has two
million visitors."
http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/article4385793.ece

Google launches Knol - a wiki with bylines
July 23, 2008
"Google opened its website Knol to the public on Wednesday, allowing
people to write about their areas of expertise under their bylines in
a twist on encyclopaedia Wikipedia, which allows anonymity."
""We are deeply convinced that authorship -- knowing who wrote what --
helps readers trust the content," said Cedric DuPont, product manager
for Knol."
"The name of the service is a play on an individual unit of knowledge,
DuPont said, and entries on the public website, knol.google.com, are
called "knols". Google conducted a limited test of the site beginning
in December."
"Knol has publishing tools similar to single blog pages. But unlike
blogs, Knol encourages writers to reduce what they know about a topic
to a single page that is not chronologically updated."
""What we want to get away from is 'this last voice wins' model which
is very difficult if you are a busy professional," DuPont said."
"Google wants to rank entries by popularity to encourage competition.
For example, the first knol on "Type 1 Diabetes" is by Anne Peters,
director of the University of Southern California's Clinical Diabetes
Programs."
"As other writers publish on diabetes, Google plans to rank related
pages according to user ratings, reviews and how often people refer to
specific pages, DuPont said."
"Knol focuses on individual authors or groups of authors in contrast
to Wikipedia's subject entries, which are updated by users and edited
behind the scenes."
http://uk.reuters.com/article/internetNews/idUKN2325911820080724

Like Wikipedia but for Cash: Google's Knol
July 23, 2008
"Its new Knol - short for 'a unit of knowledge' - site is similar to
Wikipedia in that anyone can write an article on (almost) anything.
But where Wikipedia is a collective endeavor where anyone can both
write and edit pieces, Knol focuses on preserving ownership of
articles."
"That ownership makes for two key differences when comparing Knol with
Wikipedia. First, authors can choose 'Moderated collaboration' for
their work, which allows them to vet any proposed changes to their
article. And second, authors can opt to show Google ads, and thereby
share in their revenue."
"If you have a Gmail account, it takes about 30 seconds to start
writing a knol. If you do, you can also choose open collaboration,
where any signed-in user can edit the knol. And knols won't display
revenue-generating ads by default. To get them, you'll need to create
an AdSense account or tie in an existing account."
"Google's announcement post says that the company expects "multiple
knolls on the same subject, and we think that is good.""
"I'm curious to see where Knol will go, and whether anyone will make
any real money from its ads. I disagree with TechCrunch's Jason
Kincaid, who writes that the system will draw many posts on huge
topics like Barack Obama, but fail to draw articles on less popular
topics. It instead encourages the opposite, since a well-written post
on an obscure subject would stand out much more than a me-too article
on a politician. The authoritative post would stand a better chance of
showing up in search results, and thereby drawing ad revenue, for a
longer period of time."
http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/blogs/larkin_on_the_web/148844/like_wikipedia_but_for_cash_googles_knol.html

Google Indexes 1 Trillion URLs

We knew the web was big...
July 25, 2008
"We've known it for a long time: the web is big. The first Google
index in 1998 already had 26 million pages, and by 2000 the Google
index reached the one billion mark. Over the last eight years, we've
seen a lot of big numbers about how much content is really out there.
Recently, even our search engineers stopped in awe about just how big
the web is these days -- when our systems that process links on the
web to find new content hit a milestone: 1 trillion (as in
1,000,000,000,000) unique URLs on the web at once!"
"How do we find all those pages? We start at a set of well-connected
initial pages and follow each of their links to new pages. Then we
follow the links on those new pages to even more pages and so on,
until we have a huge list of links. In fact, we found even more than 1
trillion individual links, but not all of them lead to unique web
pages. Many pages have multiple URLs with exactly the same content or
URLs that are auto-generated copies of each other. Even after removing
those exact duplicates, we saw a trillion unique URLs, and the number
of individual web pages out there is growing by several billion pages
per day."
"So how many unique pages does the web really contain? We don't know;
we don't have time to look at them all! :-) Strictly speaking, the
number of pages out there is infinite -- for example, web calendars
may have a "next day" link, and we could follow that link forever,
each time finding a "new" page. We're not doing that, obviously, since
there would be little benefit to you. But this example shows that the
size of the web really depends on your definition of what's a useful
page, and there is no exact answer."
"We don't index every one of those trillion pages -- many of them are
similar to each other, or represent auto-generated content similar to
the calendar example that isn't very useful to searchers. But we're
proud to have the most comprehensive index of any search engine, and
our goal always has been to index all the world's data."
"To keep up with this volume of information, our systems have come a
long way since the first set of web data Google processed to answer
queries. Back then, we did everything in batches: one workstation
could compute the PageRank graph on 26 million pages in a couple of
hours, and that set of pages would be used as Google's index for a
fixed period of time. Today, Google downloads the web continuously,
collecting updated page information and re-processing the entire web-
link graph several times per day. This graph of one trillion URLs is
similar to a map made up of one trillion intersections. So multiple
times every day, we do the computational equivalent of fully exploring
every intersection of every road in the United States. Except it'd be
a map about 50,000 times as big as the U.S., with 50,000 times as many
roads and intersections."
"As you can see, our distributed infrastructure allows applications to
efficiently traverse a link graph with many trillions of connections,
or quickly sort petabytes of data, just to prepare to answer the most
important question: your next Google search."
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/07/we-knew-web-was-big.html

Google Page Creator Will Be Shut Down

Google Slowly Closing Page Creator
August 5, 2008
"As Digital Inspiration noticed, Google on their Page Creator About
page says:"
"We are no longer accepting new sign-ups for Page Creator because we
have shifted our focus to developing Google Sites, which offers many
of the capabilities of Page Creator along with new features like site
-level navigation, site-level headers, control over who can see and
edit your site, and rich embeddings like calendars, videos, and Google
docs."
"Google Page Creator is or was Google’s general web page creation
program (Google also offers Knol to create knowledge articles, and
Blogger to start a blog; other tools of theirs, like Google Documents,
can output a webpage too). In a closed help group thread on the
subject, Google states:"
"Page Creator has always been a Google Labs project (Labs is our
“technology playground” where we let users test-drive experimental
products and give us feedback so we can innovate more quickly). Since
launching Page Creator in Labs, we’ve learned a lot and have
incorporated those lessons into Google Sites. We think the Labs
program, which allows users to try new things before they’re fully
baked, lets us innovate faster and ultimately create the best possible
products."
"User André Banen, who’s very helpful in the Google help groups, tells
me, “Personally I’m not very happy with this decision. Google Page
Creator offered me the possibility to enter JavaScript code into web
pages and to use iframes to embed content, something that Google Sites
currently [won’t] allow.”"
http://blogoscoped.com/archive/2008-08-05-n83.html

Google Page Creator to Be Closed
August 9, 2008
"This year, Google discontinued a lot of services: Browser Sync,
Hello, Send to SMS and Send to Phone extension. Another Google Labs
experiment is about to be discontinued: Page Creator, a simple way to
create web pages without knowing HTML. Google Page Creator's rich text
editor is now included in many other Google services, but Google
decided to focus on the more powerful Google Sites."
"It's not clear if Google will also move the files uploaded to Page
Creator, so you can continue to use them. "For migrated sites we will
automatically redirect your googlepages.com URL to the appropriate
sites.google.com URL to ensure your visitors aren't lost due to the
transition. In addition, we will be providing a means for you to
download your site so that you can easily export it to other services
if you choose to do so," explains Google."
http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2008/08/google-page-creator-to-be-closed.html

Announcement
August 4, 2008
"We are no longer accepting new sign-ups for Page Creator because we
have shifted our focus to developing Google Sites. Google Sites offers
many of the capabilities of Page Creator along with new features like
site-level navigation, site-level headers, control over who can see
and edit your site, and rich embeddings like calendars, videos, and
Google docs. Simply put, we think that Google Sites offers a better
experience for creating web pages and websites. Consequently, we will
be shutting down Page Creator later this year."
"If you are currently a Page Creator user, you can continue to use
Page Creator and your pages will automatically be transitioned to
Google Sites later this year. We are committed to making this
transition as smooth and easy as possible, and we will post more
details as we get closer to the transition time. You can also manually
move your web pages from Page Creator to Google Sites or other service
providers at any time."
"Page Creator has always been a Google Labs project (Labs is our
"technology playground" where we let users test-drive experimental
products and give us feedback so we can innovate more quickly). Since
launching Page Creator in Labs, we've learned a lot and have
incorporated those lessons into Google Sites. We think the Labs
program, which allows users to try new things before they're fully
baked, lets us innovate faster and ultimately create the best possible
products."
http://groups.google.com/group/GPC-How-to/msg/1260f67111144902

About Google Page Creator
"We are no longer accepting new sign-ups for Page Creator because we
have shifted our focus to developing Google Sites, which offers many
of the capabilities of Page Creator along with new features like site
-level navigation, site-level headers, control over who can see and
edit your site, and rich embeddings like calendars, videos, and Google
docs."
"If you are currently a Page Creator user, you can continue to use
Page Creator and your pages will automatically be transitioned to
Google Sites later this year. We are committed to making this
transition as smooth and easy as possible, and we will post more
details as we get closer to the transition time. You can also manually
move your web pages from Page Creator to Google Sites or other service
providers at any time."
http://pages.google.com/-/about.html

Spammers Using Google Sites To Bypass Filters

Spammers using Google Sites to bypass filters
August 5, 2008
"Spammers have added Google Sites to the arsenal of online tools used
to get around junk-email filters, according to a study published on
Tuesday by messaging security firm MessageLabs."
"Spammers had already been making use of Google Docs, Google Page
Creator and Google Calendar as spam-hosting facilities, but Google
Sites is a recent addition, according to the MessageLabs Intelligence
Report for July 2008. Junk emailers are using the tool to
automatically create web pages with names composed of a string of
random numbers and letters, resulting in an address that is more
difficult for signature-based anti-spam tools to block, MessageLabs
said."
"The Google Sites abuse indicates that spammers are becoming more
advanced at getting around the Captcha (Completely Automated Public
Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart) mechanisms used to
defend against the automated sign-up tools frequently used by junk
emailers, said MessageLabs' chief security analyst, Mark Sunner."
""While Google Sites spam accounts for only one percent of all spam
currently, we anticipate that this technique's popularity will rival
that of its predecessors: Google Docs, Calendar and [Page Creator]
spam," Sunner said in a statement."
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/security/0,1000000189,39457158,00.htm

MessageLabs Intelligence July 2008: Spammers Use Google Sites to Host
Spam
August 5, 2008
"MessageLabs, the leading provider of messaging and web security
services to businesses worldwide, today announced the results of its
MessageLabs Intelligence Report for July 2008. Analysis highlights
that spammers continued the trend of abusing Google's hosted
applications to host spam. Previously abused applications include
Google Docs, Google Pages and Google Calendar. Google Sites allows a
novice to easily create a web page composed of a string of random
letters and numbers resulting in a URL that is more difficult to block
using traditional signature-based anti-spam tools."
""Google Sites is yet another way that spammers have programmatically
defeated CAPTCHA (Completely Automated Public Turing Test to Tell
Computers and Humans Apart) mechanisms, a validation technique that is
designed to defend against automated sign-up tools frequently used by
spammers by requiring the user to enter a string of letters," said
Mark Sunner, Chief Security Analyst, MessageLabs. "While Google Sites
spam accounts for only 1 percent of all spam currently, we anticipate
that this technique's popularity will rival that of its predecessors,
Google Docs, Calendar and Pages spam. If this is the case, then we may
see spam levels increase in the months ahead.""
"Also in July, the number of new malicious websites blocked each day
has increased by 91 percent from 2,076 since June to an average of
3,968 new sites intercepted daily. This month's rise in web threats,
according to MessageLabs, is due to the number of websites linked to
SQL injection attacks. This latest increase in malicious websites
brings the threat to record high levels."
http://business.itbusinessnet.com/articles/viewarticle.jsp?id=474031

Google Sites sending spam as CAPTCHA gets pwned
August 5, 2008
"According to the latest MessageLabs Intelligence Report, the Google
Sites CAPTCHA spambot defences have been compromised by spammers..."
"The MessageLabs Intelligence Report for July 2008 reveals that
spammers are looking towards Google Sites to spread their wares. This
follows on from previous spam attacks directed at Google Docs, Google
Pages and Google Calendar."
"Researchers look at it as being just the latest in a continuing trend
that targets Google's hosted applications in order to exploit the
brand trust to distribute spam and malware. There are two reasons why
Google Sites has been targeted, they say:"
"Firstly, it allows the novice to create a web page that comprises
entirely of a string of random letters and numbers with relative ease.
This results in a URL that is far more difficult to block than most
when using bog-standard signature-based anti-spam tools."
"Secondly, and a lot more worryingly so, is the indication that the
'Completely Automated Public Turing Test to Tell Computers and Humans
Apart' or CAPTCHA entry validation system has been pwned."
http://www.itwire.com/content/view/19860/53/

Google's Beijing 2008 Olympic Games Content

Google: 2008 Summer Games (USA)
http://www.google.com/landing/summergames2008/index.html

Google: 2008 Summer Games (China)
http://www.google.cn/landing/summergames2008/index.html

Google News: Olympics category
http://news.google.com/news?topic=o

YouTube: Summer Games
http://www.youtube.com/ytsummergames

Google Maps: Summer Games 2008
http://maps.google.com/help/maps/2008summergames/

iGoogle Gadget: 2008 Summer Games
http://www.google.com/ig/adde?moduleurl=www.google.com/ig/modules/olympics.xml

Google Desktop gadget: 2008 Summer Games
http://desktop.google.com/plugins/i/googlesummergames.html

Googe Mobile: Summer Games 2008
http://www.google.com/m/messageboard?mb=08bj

Google 3D Warehouse: 2008 Summer Games (SketchUp and Google Earth 
models)
http://sketchup.google.com/3dwarehouse/cldetails?mid=efe83785f1aaaae0ae682533f3f1d4dd&ct=hpr2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0p2cEQCsBuY

iGoogle China (shows Olympics theme and gadget)
http://www.google.cn/ig/china

Google China SMS Alerts
http://www.google.com/sms/alerts

Sources:

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/08/keeping-up-with-summer-games.html
http://google-latlong.blogspot.com/2008/08/off-to-games.html
http://blogoscoped.com/archive/2008-08-08-n56.html

Google Search Insights

Google Search Insights
"With Google Insights for Search, you can compare search volume
patterns across specific regions, categories, and time frames."
http://www.google.com/insights/search

Google Search Insights Help Center
http://www.google.com/support/insights/

How does Google Insights for Search work?
"Google Insights for Search analyzes a portion of worldwide Google web
searches from all Google domains to compute how many searches have
been done for the terms you've entered, relative to the total number
of searches done on Google over time. We then show you a graph with
the results, indicating interest over time, plotted on a scale from 0
to 100; the totals are indicated next to bars by the search terms."
http://www.google.com/support/insights/bin/answer.py?answer=87276&topic=13973

How can I use Google Insights for Search?
"The examples below showcase some different ways of using Google
Insights for Search. Whether you’re an advertising agency, a small
business owner, a multinational corporation, or an academic
researcher, Insights for Search can help you gauge interest in
pertinent search terms."
Choosing advertising messages
"Insights can help you determine which messages resonate best. For
example, an automobile manufacturer may be unsure of whether it should
highlight fuel efficiency, safety, or engine performance to market a
new car model."
Examining seasonality
"Insights can be used to determine seasonality. For example, a ski
resort may want to find out when people search for ski-related terms
most often."
Creating brand associations
"Insights can be a helpful tool in creating brand associations. Take,
for example, an advertising agency that needs to build a compelling
advertising campaign for its client, a computer hardware company. The
agency needs to know what competing brands are doing: how should they
position their client's product against them?"
"When comparing laptops or notebook, it's useful to apply the Category
filter, whereby the data will be narrowed down to just Computers &
Electronics."
Entering new markets
"Insights can be useful in determining a new market. A wine
distributor may be looking to expand into new markets. By entering in
wine + vino, and comparing the data across multiple countries, such as
Argentina, Mexico, Spain, and Venezuela, the distributor can get a
sense of where interest is more prevalent."
http://www.google.com/support/insights/bin/answer.py?answer=96693&topic=13973

Why isn't data available for every search term?
"Insights for Search analyzes a portion of Google searches. It's
possible that rare or uncommon searches, or ones that pertain to a
very narrow time range or region may not have enough search volume to
be presented. Keep in mind that Insights only shows results for
searches that have a significant amount of volume, and enforces
minimum thresholds for inclusion in the tool."
http://www.google.com/support/insights/bin/answer.py?answer=98987&topic=15218

Error Message: Not enough search volume to show results.
"You'll see this message when you've entered a search term that
doesn't have enough search volume. Remember, Insights for Search only
returns data for terms that have a significant amount of search
volume."
http://www.google.com/support/insights/bin/answer.py?answer=99568&topic=15217

Google Insights for Search forum
"Welcome to the Google Insights for Search discussion forum! In this
community, you can search or browse for answers, ask questions, and
assist others. We also encourage you to share best practices and ideas
about using Insights to build or improve your marketing campaigns."
http://groups.google.com/group/google-insights-for-search

Google Geolocation API

New Gears Geolocation API powers mobile web sites
August 22, 2008
"Imagine if web sites could provide you with customized information
based on your current location, even if you don't have GPS. Today
we're launching the Gears Geolocation API for mobile and desktop
browsers, while two third-party developers are launching the first
location-enabled web apps using this API on Windows Mobile."
"The API can determine your location using nearby cell-towers or GPS
for your mobile device or your computer's IP address for your laptop.
Google provides this service for free to both developers and users."
http://googlemobile.blogspot.com/2008/08/new-gears-geolocation-api-powers-mobile.html

Two new ways to location-enable your web apps
August 21, 2008
"We just launched two new ways to give your web apps free and secure
access to a user's location, without requiring that user to enter it
manually."
"First, there's the AJAX API property that provides a simple way to
get an approximate, region-level estimate of a user's location based
on their IP address. It's as simple as referencing
google.loader.ClientLocation, which is made available using the Google
AJAX API Loader. This API does not require users to install any
client-side software. You can see this new AJAX API in action as part
of the 2008 US Election gadget -- the "News by State" will show local
news for the state associated with the user's IP."
"Second, the Gears Geolocation API provides a way to get a more
precise estimate of a user's location. On mobile devices with Gears
installed, the Geolocation API can use the cell-ID of nearby cell
towers or on-board GPS (if either is available) to improve the postion
fix. In the near future, we'll be adding data from your WiFi
connection to improve accuracy even further, on both desktop and
mobile. In all cases, Gears takes care of assimilating the results
from each source and returning the best available position estimate."
"To use the Geolocation API your users may need to install the Gears
browser plugin, a simple process on both desktop and mobile. The
Geolocation API is available on platforms currently supported by
Gears, including Internet Explorer, Firefox and IE Mobile (selected
devices only). For users to be able to use location-enabled features
on mobile they will need a Windows Mobile device that supports GPS or
cell-ID lookup (for example the Samsung BlackJack II and the HTC Touch
Dual, see list of supported device models in our FAQ)."
http://google-code-updates.blogspot.com/2008/08/two-new-ways-to-location-enable-your.html

Google Geolocation API
"The Geolocation API enables a web application to obtain a user's
geographical position."
http://code.google.com/apis/gears/api_geolocation.html

"google.loader.ClientLocation"
"When an application makes used of the AJAX API loader, the loader
attempts to geo locate the client based on it's IP address. If this
process succeeds, the client's location, scoped to the metro level, is
made available in the google.loader.ClientLocation property. If the
process fails to find a match, this property is set to null."
http://code.google.com/apis/ajax/documentation/#ClientLocation

Google Gears
http://gears.google.com/

Google AJAX APIs
http://code.google.com/apis/ajax/

Google Chrome

Google Chrome
"Google Chrome is a browser that combines a minimal design with
sophisticated technology to make the web faster, safer, and easier."
http://www.google.com/chrome/

Google Chrome Help Center
http://www.google.com/support/chrome/

Google Chrome Forum
http://groups.google.com/group/google-chrome-help

Google Chrome Getting Started Guide
"Google Chrome is an open-source web browser built to support web
applications and search with speed and stability. It's currently
available for Windows XP with Service Pack 2 or later and Windows
Vista. Mac and Linux versions are being developed, so stay tuned."
http://www.google.com/support/chrome/bin/topic.py?topic=14658

Google Chrome Features
http://www.google.com/chrome/intl/en/features.html

Google Chrome Known Issues
http://www.google.com/support/chrome/bin/request.py?contact_type=known_issues_2

Google Code: Chromium
"Join us in an open-source browser project to help move the web
forward"
"Chromium is the open-source project behind Google Chrome. We're
releasing a first look at Chromium and invite you to join us in our
effort to:"
"• Help build a safer, faster, and more stable way for all Internet
users to experience the web"
"• Create a powerful platform for developing a new generation of web
applications"
"Built for the open web"
"All of the code in the project is open source, including V8, a new
JavaScript virtual machine. You can get Chromium's source code and
contribute to the project."
http://code.google.com/chromium/

Chromium Developer Documentation
"Chromium is an open-source browser project that aims to build a
safer, faster, and more stable way for all Internet users to
experience the web. This site contains design documents, architecture
overviews, testing information, and more to help you learn to build
and work with the Chromium source code."
http://dev.chromium.org/

Chromium Forums
http://dev.chromium.org/developers/discussion-groups

The Chromium Blog
http://blog.chromium.org/

Welcome to Chromium
September 2, 2008
"Today, Google launched a new web browser called Google Chrome. At the
same time, we are releasing all of the code as open source under a
permissive BSD license. The open source project is called Chromium -
after the metal used to make chrome."
"Why did Google release the source code?"
"Primarily it's because one of the fundamental goals of the Chromium
project is to help drive the web forward. Open source projects like
Firefox and WebKit have led the way in defining the next generation of
web technologies and standards, and we felt the best way we could help
was to follow suit, and be as open as we could. To be clear, improving
the web in this way also has some clear benefits for us as a company.
With a richer set of APIs we can build more interesting apps allowing
people to do more online. The more people do online, the more they can
use our services. At any rate, we have worked on this project by
ourselves for long enough - it's time for us to engage with the wider
web community so that we can move on to the next set of challenges."
http://blog.chromium.org/2008/09/welcome-to-chromium_02.html

Google Chrome now live
September 2, 2008
"In yesterday's post on Google Chrome, we promised to let you know
when it would be available for everyone to try -- and that time is
now. Visit http://www.google.com/chrome to download and start
exploring. (For the moment, it's available only for Windows users, but
you can sign up on the download page to learn when the Mac and Linux
versions are available.)"
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/09/google-chrome-now-live.html

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