New From Google Blogs

Google Italia Blog: Venite a scoprire Roma Antica in 3D

noreply@blogger.com (anhtrangleloi) — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 03:52:00 -0800

Ciò che mi ha affascinato di più di questo progetto è la fedeltà e la precisione nella ricostruzione tridimensionale della Roma Imperiale. Grazie a Roma Antica in 3D di Google sarà possibile per chiunque, a Roma come a Calcutta attraverso internet, fare un viaggio nel tempo alla scoperta dell’Urbe così come appariva 1.688 anni fa, al tempo dell’imperatore Costantino.

È una grande emozione poter ammirare con la telecamera virtuale i monumenti, le strade, i palazzi dell’Antica Roma, entrare negli edifici e visualizzarli nei loro minimi dettagli architettonici: dal Colosseo al Ludus Magnus, dal Foro di Cesare all’Arco di Settimio Severo, dalla tribuna Rostra alla Basilica Julia.

Sono 6.700 gli edifici dell’Antica Roma ricostruiti in 3D e visualizzabili attraverso questo progetto: un vero primato. Si tratta di un’esperienza straordinaria che dimostra quanto le nuove tecnologie possano fare per promuovere cultura e diffondere conoscenza.

Roma Antica di Google è un formidabile stimolo per riscoprire la grandezza della civiltà romana che poi e alla base della nostra identità di italiani, di europei e, più in generale, di occidentali. Il patrimonio archeologico, monumentale e artistico dell’Impero Romano si estende in vari continenti, ma nella Capitale (al tempo dei romani era Caput Mundi) trova la sua concentrazione maggiore.

Opere come il Colosseo (una delle sette meraviglie del mondo) hanno saputo sconfiggere la durissima prova del tempo, resistendo nei secoli a saccheggi, invasioni e guerre mondiali, testimoniando con l’immortalità della pietra la grandezza di uno degli imperi più maestosi mai esistiti.

L’idea che oggi, grazie all’evoluzione della realtà virtuale abbinata alla grande capacità di diffusione del Web, si possa viaggiare nel tempo e visitare la città che amministro così com’era nel 320 d.C mi emoziona e mi riempie di orgoglio, avendo ereditato come Sindaco di questa metropoli anche il suo glorioso passato.

L’aver presentato il layer tridimensionale di Roma Antica in 3D nell’aula Giulio Cesare, proprio sotto la sua grande statua di marmo, è stata una scelta vincente, soprattutto per promuovere e far comprendere la grandezza di questa città a livello globale

Scritto da: Gianni Alemanno, Sindaco di Roma
Link - from Google Italia Blog
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An invitation from the mayor of Rome: Come see Ancient Rome in 3D

noreply@blogger.com (anhtrangleloi) — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 03:50:00 -0800

As you read this, I am standing beneath a marble statue of Julius Caesar, participating in an event that means a lot to me: the launch of the Ancient Rome 3D layer in Google Earth. Thanks to Google and the Rome Reborn Project, everyone in the world, from Rome itself to Calcutta, can now travel through time and discover Ancient Rome as it was 1,688 years ago when it was ruled by Emperor Constantine.

The project includes more than 6,700 buildings of Ancient Rome rebuilt in 3D — a true record. This accomplishment demonstrates how technology can be helpful in promoting culture and disseminating knowledge. Ancient Rome 3D is a great opportunity to rediscover the importance of Ancient Roman culture, which is at the base of the Italian, European and, more generally, Western identities. The archaeological heritage and the artistic monuments of the Roman Empire have found their way to many continents, but it is in the capital city (known in Roman times as Caput Mundi, which is Latin for "Capital of the World") that we can still find most of it. For example, architectural masterpieces like the Colosseum (considered one of the seven wonders of the world) have managed to withstand the tests of time — resisting sacks, invasions and world wars over the centuries and proving, with the immortality of their stones, the grandness of one of the most majestic empires that has ever existed.

What fascinates me most about this project is the accuracy of the details of the three-dimensional models. It's such a great experience to be able to admire the monuments, streets and buildings of Ancient Rome with a virtual camera that lets you go inside and see all the architectural details. From the Colosseum to the Ludus Magnus, from the Forum Caesar to the Arch of Septimius Severus, from the Rostra to the Basilica Julia, you can get up close to them all. The idea that virtual technologies now let people experience the city that I guide as it appeared in 320 A.D. fills me with pride — a pride that I inherited from Rome's glorious past.

(To find out more about the new layer, visit http://earth.google.com/rome/, watch the video tour below, or check out the Google Lat Long Blog.)

Posted by Gianni Alemanno, Mayor of Rome
Link - from Official Google Blog
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Roman history comes to life in Google Earth

noreply@blogger.com (anhtrangleloi) — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 03:47:00 -0800

Were you someone who struggled to stay awake in ancient history class? If so, perhaps this was due to those uninspiring "artist renditions" in your textbook. Reading countless pages that described how a monument, building or city may have appeared at the time can be pretty difficult to imagine.

Well, today we introduced a new approach to learning about ancient history: the ability to go back in time and explore Rome as it existed in 320 AD -- in 3D!

All of this is possible through the new Ancient Rome 3D layer in Google Earth. To activate the layer, simply open the "Gallery" folder in the "Layers" panel and select "Ancient Rome 3D."

The new layer, produced by the University of Virginia's Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities (IATH) and based on its Rome Reborn model, contains over 6,700 3D buildings and 250 Google Earth placemarks that allow Google Earth users to explore and learn about this fascinating period of history.

This is the first time that we have incorporated an ancient city in Google Earth. Going back in time presented some new challenges, such as how to handle the ancient terrain which was clearly different than modern day. We needed to ensure that modern day imagery, terrain and buildings didn't interfere with the ancient Rome model so we opted for a simple overlay.

This exciting new layer also serves as the inspiration for the Google Ancient Rome 3D Curriculum Competition, a first-ever Google contest geared towards K-12 educators in the US. Whether your lesson plan involves teaching geometry through Roman architecture or re-imagining ancient history with this new visualization tool, there's fame and an awesome prize package waiting for you! The submission deadline is February 9th, so get those creative engines revved up soon!

So go ahead, fly down to the Roman Forum and experience what it may have felt like to stand on the Rostra of Augusta and make a political speech. Or, if you've fantasized about being a gladiator in the Colosseum, go for it. Simply fly there in Google Earth, enter through the ground level door and envision the crowds cheering you on! Take a look at this video to see what adventures await:

Omnes viae Romam ducunt (all roads lead to Rome).

Posted by Bruce Polderman, Product Manager, Google Earth
Link - from Google LatLong
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Cool Tool for News Use

noreply@blogger.com (anhtrangleloi) — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 03:36:00 -0800

Posted by Hicham Alaoui, Associate Product Marketing Manager

Our friends at the Toolbar team recently launched Google Toolbar 5 for Internet Explorer out of beta in 40 languages. To celebrate this occasion and Toolbar's upcoming eighth birthday, we upgraded our Google News Toolbar gadget: You'll now find tabs with different Google News sections embedded directly into the toolbar, so you can read the news as soon as it breaks, browse top news headlines and images, all without having to leave the site you're on:

You can click through the different categories to see the top stories in the U.S., World, Entertainment, and Sci-Tech domains. When you find something you want to read, you can click on an article to open it in a new tab, or click "all news articles" to open the Google News page containing all related items on that particular topic.

To learn more about the different features on this new release of toolbar, visit toolbar.google.com/features.
Link - from Google News Blog
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Google News Blog: Election results in real-time

noreply@blogger.com (anhtrangleloi) — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 03:35:00 -0800

Posted by Robert Leland, Software Engineer

Today, Americans all across the country are voting, and the results will soon be tallied. We'll make sure you can stay abreast of the election returns on the same Google News pages that already bring you current election news. We'll be providing results from the presidential, Senate, House, and gubernatorial races as they are reported by the Associated Press.

On the front page of Google News, you'll find a Google Map gadget showing real-time popular and electoral vote counts. On the Elections section page, you can see more detailed results. At the top of the right column we have summaries of the presidential race, and the races for majority control in the Senate and House. Beneath the summaries you can select a state in the pull-down menu. For each state we display the breakdown in votes for the presidency, governor (where there is a race), and for each Senate and House seat that's being contested. You can also follow the presidential election, and see a summary of the popular and electoral votes by visiting news.google.com on your iPhone or Android-powered mobile phone.

For more Google election tools, be sure to check out our 2008 Elections page. It features some useful Google Maps, including one which can give you the location of your polling place. So keep up with the results as they're reported, from wherever you are -- and be sure to add your vote to the tally!
Link - from Google News Blog
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Google News Blog: Looking back in time for context

noreply@blogger.com (anhtrangleloi) — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 03:34:00 -0800

Posted by Jack Hebert, Software Engineer

News coverage usually focuses on the most recent events, and when we first launched quotes, we did the same. However, past events frequently provide context that helps us better understand the present. With this in mind, we recently extended our quotes coverage back to 2003. Hopefully this new data (our quotes index grew 15x in size!) will help shed light on what people have thought and said over time, and how their views have changed.

As always, to find a person's quotes you can search for their name on Google News, and if we have any quotes from that person, they'll appear in a onebox at the top of the page. Click on the 'more by' link and from there you can simply browse through all our quotes from that person, or filter them to a specific year using the links on the left. Try comparing Alan Greenspan's quotes on the economy from 2004 to those from 2008:

People running for office are some of the most prolific speakers, especially on economic matters. In Quotes makes it easy to compare what McCain and Obama have said about the economy (or, try comparing Palin and Biden.)

Of course, quotes are not restricted to politics--there are also many from sports figures. See what Michael Phelps said about the 2004 and 2008 Olympic games, or what Roger Federer has been saying about Wimbledon.
Link - from Google News Blog
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Google News Blog: Straight from the horse's mouth

noreply@blogger.com (anhtrangleloi) — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 03:34:00 -0800

Posted by Arnaud Sahuguet, Product Manager

With Google News, you can read what candidates are saying about a given topic. You can even compare what two of them are saying about the same topic. But it's also important to hear candidates deliver their own message themselves, in their own voice.

Today, we're adding another tool to the Google News suite to enable you to find and access political messages straight from the horse's mouth. Using the Google Audio Indexing (GAudi) technology already available on Labs, you can now search for and watch political videos right from the Google News election page.

Starting today, after reading an article about a topic that matters to you, you can quickly find out what the candidates have to say about it and hear them say it. Just enter the topic you're interested in, or the sequence of words you want to find, and we'll search candidates' YouTube channels to return a set of relevant videos. You can filter the results by channel (all candidates, McCain's campaign, Obama's campaign or the presidential debates). When we return a result, we use yellow markers to indicate the exact moments the words you're looking for are uttered. Just hover over the marker to read the transcript of a short audio snippet or click on it to jump to the right moment inside the video. You can also share a given video with your friends (just click on ), in case they don't want to take your word for it. Keep in mind that speech-to-text technology is not perfect yet, and some transcriptions might contain some errors. But we think this tool will serve as a valuable resource as we count down to Election 2008.

Checking for political consistency (or inconsistency) has never been so simple. And as election day nears, keep checking our election-related projects.
Link - from Google News Blog
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Google News in Telugu

noreply@blogger.com (anhtrangleloi) — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 03:33:00 -0800

Posted by Kiran Gunda, Software Engineer

During this festive season we are excited to welcome the newest member of the Google News family - Google News in Telugu. Like all Google News editions, the Telugu edition gathers news from several Telugu sources and automatically arranges these stories in different sections.

We know that the 75 million strong Telugu speaking population wants to stay on top of current affairs and we hope this new edition makes it easier for them do so. The Telugu edition is our fifth Indian edition of Google News; we already have editions in English, Hindi, Tamil and Malayalam.

As we've blogged about in our previous Indian language edition launches, one of the biggest challenges we faced was making sense of the many non-standard font-encodings used by various publications. This makes it very hard for search engines to make sense of the text because they are not recognized correctly. Since Unicode is the well established standard for exchange of text today, we strongly encourage news websites to adopt the Unicode-based UTF-8 standard.

If you are a Telugu news publisher and don't see your site on our editions, you can contact us to request inclusion. In some cases, we were not able to include news sites because of technical reasons having to do with the structure of the URL or proprietary encodings. You can learn much more about making sure your content is surfaced correctly by reading our documentation on Help for Publishers.
Link - from Google News Blog
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And then Google News came to Poland

noreply@blogger.com (anhtrangleloi) — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 03:31:00 -0800

Posted by Benoit Lafortune, Sr. Strategist, News Online Team

We're thrilled to announce that we've launched Google News in yet another language: Polish! With this launch, Google News is now available in 23 languages and 48 country editions.

In addition to searching and browsing more than 300 news sources from their desktop, 40 million Polish speakers from Poland and around the world will also be able to find News results through an iPhone. These news results will also be blended into standard Google search results. So to quickly get an overview of what's happening in Poland right now, go to http://news.google.pl/

If you're a Polish speaker, you can check out what Przemysław Budkowski wrote about this launch on the Google Poland blog:

Google news w polsce
Link - from Google News Blog
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Google News Blog: Say what?

noreply@blogger.com (anhtrangleloi) — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 03:30:00 -0800

Posted by Jack Hebert, Software Engineer

While political consistency (or inconsistency) can be funny, as John Stewart pointed out in a recent episode of the Daily Show, it can also be a serious political matter.

With upcoming elections in the United States and Canada, we've built a tool that you can use to compare what candidates and other political figures are saying about different issues: we call it "In Quotes." As you might know, Google News already extracts quotes from news articles. Even so, it was a pretty tedious process to compare what two people were saying about a particular topic.

As you might have guessed, In Quotes allows you to do just that. You can easily read what, for example, John McCain and Barack Obama have already said about the economy, education or energy (that's just the e's!). There are more people to select from beyond the US presidential candidates, though, and we also have customized lists of people and topics for Canada, the United Kingdom and India. You can scroll through quotes for each topic, or click the "spin" button to see a random quote for the issue. As with our existing quotes feature, the quotes are automatically selected from Google News articles. It's also worth pointing out that we've launched this feature in Google Labs, which means that it's an experimental feature for the moment.

If you dig on political gadgetry (like I do) you should check out Google's other election-related projects, or another cool take on quotations in the news. Happy spinning!
Link - from Google News Blog
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Google News for Malaysia, Philippines and Pakistan

noreply@blogger.com (anhtrangleloi) — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 03:28:00 -0800

Posted by Rohit Ananthakrishna, Software Engineer

Over the last few weeks we've presented a number of new language launches for Google News: 9 new editions in Africa, a Turkish edition and a Malayalam language edition in India.

We're proud to present the three newest members of the Google News family: editions for Malaysia, Philippines and Pakistan. These are all English language editions.

So, what does it mean to launch a new edition of Google News in a country? With these editions, we hope that readers in these countries can now reach the best news destinations on the internet even faster, and help news publishers better connect to news readers. If you are an English language news publisher in Malaysia, Philippines or Pakistan and don't see your site on our editions, please don't hesitate to contact us to request inclusion.
Link - from Google News Blog
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Google News Blog: Update on United Airlines story

noreply@blogger.com (anhtrangleloi) — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 03:27:00 -0800

Posted by Josh Cohen, Business Product Manager

Aggregators like Google News were today the subject of news – this time pertaining to a 2002 story regarding United Airlines. For those of you who are interested in the nuts and bolts of why this was indexed by Google News, here are the details:

On Saturday, September 6th at 10:36PM Pacific, the Google crawler discovered a new link on the Florida Sun-Sentinel website in a section of the most viewed stories labeled "Popular Stories: Business." The link appeared in that section sometime after Googlebot's last crawl at 10:17PM; because the crawler saw this new link appear, it followed it to an article titled "UAL Files for Bankruptcy."

The only date found in the context of the article indicated that the article was from September 7, 2008.

The article was indexed and then available through Google News search, but was not shown on our headlines pages.

We removed this story from the Google News index as soon as we were notified that it had been linked to in error.

It has been widely reported that many readers were unable to determine the original date of publication of this article, and our crawling was similarly unable to recognize that the article was old.

UPDATE 9/10/08

Since our last post, some have asked why Google News didn't recognize that an old story relating to United Airlines' 2002 bankruptcy was outdated. We thought that a brief chronology would be helpful.

On Saturday, September 6th at 10:36 PM Pacific Daylight Time (or Sunday, September 7th at 1:36 AM Eastern Daylight Time), the Google crawler detected a new link on the Florida Sun-Sentinel's website in a section of the most viewed stories labeled "Popular Stories: Business." The link had newly appeared in that section since the last time Google News' Googlebot webcrawler had visited the page (nineteen minutes earlier), so the crawler followed the link and found an article titled "UAL Files for Bankruptcy." The article failed to include a standard newspaper article dateline, but the Sun-Sentinel page had a fresh date above the article on the top of the page of "September 7, 2008" (Eastern).

Because the Sun-Sentinel included a link to the story in its "Popular Stories" section, and provided a date on the article page of September 7, 2008, the Google News algorithm indexed it as a new story. We removed this story as soon as we were notified that it was posted in error.

While we don't know why the Sun-Sentinel's website included the link in its "Popular Stories" section, our timestamps show that Google News first crawled the UAL story after following the link from the Sun-Sentinel's "Popular Stories" box:

At 10:17:35 PM/PDT, our crawler retrieved a copy of the Sun-Sentinel business section page.

As you can see, no UAL story appears at this time.

At 10:36:38 PM/PDT, our crawler retrieved an updated copy of the same section. This updated version included a new link in the "Popular Stories: Business" section to a story titled "UAL Files for Bankruptcy."

At 10:36:57 PM/PDT, our crawler followed the new link and fetched this copy of the UAL story.

At that point, our index was updated to include the article with the date that the story was crawled, and the story became searchable on Google News.

At 10:39:57 PM/PDT, the Sun-Sentinel received its first referral to the UAL story from Google News, with a user clicking on a Google News link to the Sun-Sentinel's UAL story.

The Tribune Co. (owner of the Sun-Sentinel) has confirmed in its September 9, 2008 press release that the first referral from Google News to the article came after the UAL story appeared in the "Popular Stories" section.

We hope that this sheds some light on the situation from our perspective.
Link - from Google News Blog
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Bringing history online, one newspaper at a time

noreply@blogger.com (anhtrangleloi) — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 03:25:00 -0800

Posted by Punit Soni, Product Manager

Today, we announced that we're launching an effort to give Internet users everywhere more tools to discover, explore, and celebrate much more of our journalistic heritage by digitizing archival newspapers and making them available online in partnership with newspaper publishers across the world. Head on over to the Official Google Blog to read more about this new initiative.
Link - from Google News Blog
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Live coverage of the GOP Convention on Google News

noreply@blogger.com (anhtrangleloi) — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 03:24:00 -0800

Posted by David Garnick, Product Manager

The Republican National Convention is underway in St. Paul, Minnesota, and Google News is taking you there. Well, maybe not literally there, but as close as we can get you! For the duration of the convention, you can watch live streaming of the activities on a player located on the special Elections section of Google News. (It's also embedded just below this sentence.)

11cf-96B8-444553540000" id="utv35359" height="320" width="400">Live Streaming by Ustream

We're working with Ustream.tv to stream the coverage live at the following times:

Tuesday, September 2: 6:20 - 10:05 p.m. CDT
Wednesday, September 3: 6:20 - 11:20 p.m. CDT
Thursday, September 4: 6:20 - 10:15 p.m. CDT

If you miss some of the speeches, highlights from the convention will be broadcast at other times all week long.

I'm excited that I can watch the convention, alongside ongoing news coverage, from the first balloon to the last confetti.
Link - from Google News Blog
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News without borders: search results across languages

noreply@blogger.com (anhtrangleloi) — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 03:22:00 -0800

Posted by Mahesh KM, Software Engineer

One of our most important goals for Google News is to expose readers to a diverse range of journalistic viewpoints. This is why we think it's important to have hundreds, if not thousands of different sources for important stories. It's also why Google News is currently available in more than 20 languages.

We've recently released a feature which we call cross-language search, which will help you find even more perspectives when you search in Google News. Occasionally, sources in other languages may have extremely relevant results for your query. With this feature, we want to offer stories from these sources to you when they're helpful.

You won't see results in different languages unless they're at least as good as those in your own language. This means it's more likely that you'll see results in other languages if you're using Google News in a country which doesn't have many online news sources. You'd also be more likely to see them if you're in a country in which more than one language is widely used, such as Canada or India. For a language which has lots of sources, like English, it's unlikely that you'll find a foreign-language result when you search normally on Google News -- especially if you're searching from within a monolingual country like the United States or the United Kingdom. However, if you were searching for a breaking story in another country, and sorting your results by date, you might see a foreign-language story from a local news source which has the latest coverage.

Similarly, if you type in a query in a foreign language, we'll know to display results from that language, no matter what version of Google News you're using. For example, if you use the Czech edition and want to see how the new Batman movie is being reviewed, we'll show you results from countries where it's already been released, in English and Czech. Or if you're reading the Spanish edition of Google News and want to learn more about the recent G8 summit, we'll show you results in English as well as Spanish, since 3 of the 8 countries in the G8 are Anglophone, and none are Spanish-speaking.
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More African countries now have their own edition of Google News

noreply@blogger.com (anhtrangleloi) — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 03:21:00 -0800

Posted by Divon Lan, Product Manager

Google News is a truly international project, spanning dozens of countries and over 20 languages. But that still leaves plenty of countries without their own dedicated edition of Google News.

Today, we are delighted to announce that we've made great progress in our quest to give Google News an even more global reach, by adding 9 more countries to our repertoire. If you head down to the bottom of any Google News page, you'll see new English editions in Botswana, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Namibia, Nigeria, Tanzania, Uganda and Zimbabwe.

With these 9 new editions, Google News now has a significant presence on every one of the world's inhabited continents: 5 editions in North America; 7 editions in South America and the Caribbean; 19 editions in Europe (including Turkey); 11 editions in Asia, the Middle East and Oceania; and now 10 editions in Africa.
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Google brings News to its Turkish users

noreply@blogger.com (anhtrangleloi) — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 03:20:00 -0800

Posted by Mustafa Icil, Country Marketing Manager, Turkey

Today, we're delighted to announce the launch of Google News in Turkey. Now, Turkish-speaking users in Turkey and around the world are a click away from the latest news in their native language. The Google News Turkish edition crawls articles from more than 400 sources, so that news enthusiasts in Turkey can easily discover and read a wide variety of perspectives on important stories.

We think this is a significant step towards helping our Turkish users find even more content online. We're pleased to note that with this launch, we've made over 40 regional editions of Google News available in 22 different languages.

If you're interested, you can try out the Turkish edition at news.google.com.tr or haberler.google.com.tr.
Link - from Google News Blog
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Google News goes to the Summer Games

noreply@blogger.com (anhtrangleloi) — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 03:19:00 -0800

Posted by Lara Rennie, Software Engineer, Trondheim

We have software engineers from almost every country in the world, so we know as well as anyone how passionate folks can get about their hometown athletes. This year, the Google News team is doing our part by launching a Summer Games section in different news editions so that Games enthusiasts around the world can follow the progress of athletes from New Zealand to Norway, in whatever language they prefer to read their news.

Our Summer Games section highlights the action by bringing together the top articles about the Games. This automated section, currently available in our most popular languages, combs through all the news we can find to show you the most up-to-date headlines from the 2008 Games. The section also includes two gadgets along the right side of the page: one to help you keep tabs on upcoming events and one that displays the all-important medal count.

So on the News team, we're ready for a little friendly international competition. Will the U.S. retain its 2004 distinction as the winner of the most medals? Or will China, with its home advantage, oust the States from this coveted position? One thing we know for sure: our News engineers in Norway will be cheering for Norwegian supremacy no matter what.
Link - from Google News Blog
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Google News: Now in தமிழ் (Tamil)

noreply@blogger.com (anhtrangleloi) — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 03:19:00 -0800

Posted by Vinodh Kumar, Kiran Gunda and Prasanna Meda, Software Engineers

வணக்கம். தமிழில் செய்திகள்! (Greetings, News In Tamil!)

It's not every day that you get to launch a product in a more than 2,000-year-old language spoken by more than 70 million people. That's why we're excited to tell you that Google News is now available in Tamil. Tamil is one of the most widely-spoken languages in India, which is no mean feat considering that there are 22 official languages here.

The Google News Tamil edition indexes news from a large number of Tamil sources and automatically arranges these stories in different sections. In addition to the usual Google News sections, we have seperate local sections for Tamil Nadu and Sri Lanka, regions that are home to millions of Tamilians. One issue we faced during the launch of the Tamil edition was incorporating news sites that do not use the Unicode based UTF-8 standard. We faced similar issues when we launched our Hindi edition last year. Since then, we are pleased to note that several Hindi news sites have shifted to the Unicode standard (and we encourage all publishers to do the same, so that more people can read your online publication.)

We hope this edition will help Tamil readers reach their online news destinations faster and help Tamil news publishers to connect more easily to their readers.
Link - from Google News Blog
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Testing... testing... is this on?

noreply@blogger.com (anhtrangleloi) — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 03:18:00 -0800

Posted by Frank Harris, Senior User Experience Designer

Over the course of the next few weeks, you may notice a few changes to Google News... or maybe not. You see, we'll be running some experiments on the look and feel of our site, based on an accumulation of user research and feedback, as well as the evolving state of online journalism. They'll only be visible to a small number of random Google News readers. (In case you're wondering, experiments are selected randomly, so we can't give you any advice for how to get in!)

It's pretty normal for us to run this kind of test, as we're always working to improve the experience of using Google News. In fact, experiments like these are a cornerstone of Google's development process - here's a post on the Official Google Blog explaining this practice for our search results.
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Google launches Gmail audio, video chat

noreply@blogger.com (anhtrangleloi) — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 01:54:00 -0800

Google today launched the surprise addition of Gmail video chat to its webmail interface. The feature lets contacts use Google Talk to start a two-way video or audio-only conversation with anyone currently online and can be started in the middle of a text chat. Like dedicated desktop apps, the web version carries a picture-in-picture view and can be stretched out or made full-screen.

The feature is also potentially usable by any other software, Google says: as it uses H.264 video and standard Internet streaming protocols, third-party apps can hook into the Gmail video chat format to use the feature without tying users to a web browser or specific interface.

Using the feature requires a plugin and is currently limited to Macs and Windows PCs, which can download the update today. It should work with any standard webcam recognized by the respective operating system.

The feature signals an increasing move towards live video for Google. While YouTube and nearly all the company's other properties hinge on prerecorded video, the company has begun to use live video for events and with Gmail is now giving users their first live video streaming feature. YouTube has floated the possibility of live video as with services like Qik and Ustream but so far is focusing only on making its existing playback business profitable.

GMail & Video Chat

noreply@blogger.com (anhtrangleloi) — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 01:51:00 -0800

Props to Google for the unexpected treat today. Video and audio streaming are now components within Gmail chat.

A nice addition for those who use Gmail as their primary mail & IM client. For me, it solves an irritating problem that I believe to be rather widespread...

We have a significant contingent of MAC users - especially within the web world. Most have built in iSight cameras - so the hardware exists to support video conferencing across the global team. Unfortunately, iChat requires firewall ports be opened up (if memory serves, 16 or so). Of course, getting folks to poke holes through your security takes a tad more than a short form and a nice little note. Windows users are taking advantage of LiveMeeting 07, but video conferencing in the product is limited to the full blown client. Naturally, there's no OS X version.

Alas - no easy solution for us MAC folks... Until today.

I came across the Gmail blog this afternoon, read the news, had what could be described as a small panic attack, installed the plugin and IM'd a pal. Voi la - internal video streaming without any new hardware or software, no new servers, nothing... Better yet, I'll still be getting holiday cards from my friends on the security team...

You've got to love it when someone unexpectedly drops a solution to a longstanding issue in your hands. Oh right, and for free :)

Thanks again, Google.

Google adds voice, video chat to Gmail, Google Apps

noreply@blogger.com (anhtrangleloi) — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 01:41:00 -0800

Google Inc. added a voice and video chat feature to Gmail today. The capability allows people who use the free e-mail service to click on a contact's name and talk face-to-face with the contact in a videoconference -- as long as both the user and his contact have computers equipped with webcameras and microphones.

Businesses that have bought an enterprise version of Gmail, found within the Google Apps software package, will also receive the feature at no extra charge.

Google believes that the voice and video features will benefit from the fact that webconferencing has become easier in recent years, thanks to the proliferation of Web-based applications and cameras that have been built into computers as standard features.

"It opens up opportunities that weren't there before," says Rajen Sheth, the senior product manager at Google Enterprise, which oversees Google Apps. "And just from a Web browser, you can initiate this functionality."

Now use Gmail for Voice and Video Chat!

noreply@blogger.com (anhtrangleloi) — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 01:39:00 -0800

Couple of hours ago, Gmail has announced its launch of “Gmail Voice and Video Chat” feature using which you can make voice and video calls to your online buddies right from the browser. Ironically, this feature is introduced first on the browser instead of messenger. Since long Gtalk was missing the feature of video calling which is now fulfilled by this brand new addon - Gmail for Voice and Video Chat. Seems, this new innovation is going to bring a stiff competition on the net telephony market, also the launch can be a red alert for Skype too.

To get started, you just need to install this plugin and rest will be taken care of by it. Now you must be wondering how to make voice and video calls right from the browser.. Isn’t it? Well, as highlighted on the image, after installing the plugin, just use the ‘Video & more’ button to get started. To help you understand better, I have also included a video tutorial at the bottom of this article.

As of now, we were unable to test the quality of these chats, but we will update this post once we get a chance to try it out for ourselves.

If you are still confused, just have a look on the video

Links: Video Chat Plugin | Support

Google's Gmail, Apps Gets Voice and Video Chat

noreply@blogger.com (anhtrangleloi) — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 01:37:00 -0800

Fearful that the tone of your instant messages is sometimes lost in translation? Google on Tuesday announced that it is integrating a voice and video plug-in for it Gmail Chat offering that lets you see or hear the friend with which you are chatting.

Users will need to download and install a plug-in and must have access to a webcam for video purposes. Google has partnered with Logitech and Buy.com to offer discounts of up to 30 percent on several cameras, as well as free shipping, until November 30.

A $99.99 Logitech QuickCam Pro for Notebooks, for example, is available for $69.99, while a $49 Logitech QuickCam Communicate MP is now $39.99

"I'm a big user of Gmail chat. Being able to switch from email to chat as needed, all within the same app, is really great for productivity," Justin Uberti, a Google software engineer, wrote in a blog post. "But people can only type so fast, and even with our new emoticons, there are still some things that just can't be expressed in a chat message."

Once installed, click the "Video & more" link inside the chat window and select "Start video chat" or "Start voice chat."

The friend you are trying to contact will hear a ring and be given the option to answer or ignore the call. Users can then chat within the Gmail tab or pop it out into a separate window and expand or decrease its size.

Voice and video chat is available on Macs running Mac OS X v10.4 or later and PCs running Windows XP or higher. A link to download the offering will be rolled out to all Gmail and Google Apps accounts in the coming days, but it is also available directly at http://mail.google.com/videochat.

The video function was designed via open standards, "which means that third-party applications and networks can choose to interoperate with Gmail voice and video chat," Uberti wrote.

The offering was developed by Google teams in the U.S. and Sweden "so collaborating across continents and time zones is a fact of life for us, and it sure is easier (and greener) to click 'Start video chat' than to get on a plane!" he said.