Chromebooks for classrooms: $99 for the holidays

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Posted by Rajen Sheth, Group Product Manager

(Cross-posted on the Official Google Blog.)

For many students and teachers, the hassles of traditional computing often prevent them from making the most of technology in the classroom. Schools that have adopted Chromebooks, however, have been able to bring the web’s vast educational resources—whether it’s conducting real-time research or collaborating on group projects—right into the classroom. Chromebooks are fast, easily sharable, and require almost no maintenance. Today more than 1,000 schools have adopted Chromebooks in classrooms, including some school districts like Richland School District Two (S.C.), Leyden High School District (Ill.), and Council Bluffs Community School District (Iowa) who have deployed Chromebooks to tens of thousands of students.

To help budget-strapped classrooms across the country, we’re working with DonorsChoose.org, an online charity that connects donors directly to public school classroom needs. For the holiday season, teachers can request the Samsung Series 5 Chromebook—the most widely deployed Chromebook in schools—at a special, discounted price of $99 including hardware, management and support.

If you’re a full-time public school teacher in the U.S., visit DonorsChoose.org and follow the instructions to take advantage of this opportunity by December 21, 2012. Your request will be posted on DonorsChoose.org where anyone can make a donation to support your classroom. When you reach your funding goal, you’ll receive your Chromebooks from Lakeshore Learning, DonorsChoose.org’s exclusive fulfillment partner for this program.

If you’re not a teacher, please share this opportunity with the teachers who have made a difference in your life! Or if you’re interested in supporting a classroom directly, read through the list of Chromebook projects and donate what you can. Be sure to check back often for new projects.

Thank you for your support in giving the gift of hassle-free technology to teachers and students. Working together, we can ensure “The virus ate my homework” is never uttered in a classroom again, and we can help classrooms get off to a strong start in the New Year!

Happy holidays.

Swiss railway SBB monitors mobile radio infrastructure in 3-D with Google Earth Enterprise

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Posted by Kurt Metzger, Project Manager, Swiss railway SBB Infrastructure division

Editors note: Today’s guest blogger is Kurt Metzger, Project Manager within the Swiss railway SBB Infrastructure division. His team needed a geo-information system for documenting and monitoring the internal GSM-R platform to visualize infrastructure data in 3-D.


In a single year, 357 million travelers catch their trains at more than 800 train stations run by the SBB, the largest travel and transportation company in Switzerland. To make sure that our travelers reach their destinations safely and on time, a major part of our strategy is the digital Global System of Mobile Communication-Rail platform (GSM-R). This technology covers all mobile voice and data services for rail communication. But to control the functionality of such a mobile communication system, we need technical configuration information and infrastructure data, which can best be visualized using a geographic information system (GIS) like Google Earth Enterprise.

The GIS solutions we used previously had one critical disadvantage: they didn’t support 3-D components, so any attempt to visualize the data was unsatisfactory and only two-dimensional. For example, we could not represent radio antenna geometries such as height, elevation and mast lengths. We needed a solution that would allow a high quality 3-D visualization that was clear to understand and easy to use for everyone.

We found Google Earth Enterprise to meet these requirements, and we’re using it as part of our solution for documenting and monitoring SBB’s own GSM-R network. For example, Google Earth Enterprise draws specific parameters from our existing database, generates geographical 3-D objects dynamically, and visualizes them on the Google Earth Globe. Google Earth Enterprise also simplifies our interdepartmental cooperation and our reporting to supervisory authorities. As it is intuitive to use, it provides us with valuable support in the areas of network operation and optimization, rollouts and general network upgrades.

Using Google Earth, our team can literally fly over the GSM-R infrastructure as if we’re in a plane. Thanks to this, I have the ability to observe each GSM-R location’s masts and antenna systems from every perspective. Because this is all done remotely from my computer, I don’t have to set up a security measure in advance – like closing the tracks – as is usual in the railway business.

We at SBB are more than happy with our choice to adopt Google Earth Enterprise. Over the long term, we are seeing a considerable savings in time and are able to significantly improve the quality of our data and thus our decisions, too.

Google Apps offers additional compliance options for EU data protection

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Posted by Marc Crandall, Head of Global Compliance, Google Enterprise

Earlier this year, we announced our plan to offer model contract clauses as an additional means of compliance with the European Commission’s Data Protection Directive for Google Apps customers who operate within Europe.

Today, we’re pleased to announce that model contract clauses are now available for customer sign-up via the Google Apps control panel.

Google is committed to helping users of Google Apps meet their compliance needs. In addition to Safe Harbor and our ISO 27001 certification, model contract clauses will provide customers with additional compliance options and furnish European businesses and organizations with information they need to trust Google Apps.

Chromebooks for student assessments and more

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Posted by Vidya Nagarajan, Product Manager, Chrome for Education & Business

Next February, approximately 1 million students from nearly 10,000 schools in the United States will participate in pilot tests developed by the American Institutes of Research (AIR) for the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium. We’re happy to share that AIR will now support Chromebooks as secure assessment devices to take these tests.

Photo Credit: American Institutes of Research
This development follows our earlier announcement that the PARCC and Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortia, as part of the U.S Department of Education Race to the Top initiative, verified that Chromebooks meet hardware and operating system requirements for online student assessments in the 2014-2015 school year.

An increasing number of schools are finding Chromebooks to be cost-effective and secure devices to administer testing. According to John Jesse, Director of Assessments at Utah Department of Education, several schools in Utah used Chromebooks to securely administer their summative online state assessments this past spring.

New features and web apps
The Chromebook management console—like Chrome OS—is constantly getting better. The newest features help make Chromebooks more secure as assessment kiosks. With the latest OS release you can disable external storage (e.g., USB flash drives), screenshots, audio output sources (e.g., speakers), and audio capture sources (e.g., microphones).

Likewise, we’re adding more educational apps to the Chrome Web Store all the time. New apps available include OER Commons and CK12 for curated web content, Agilix Buzz for customized learning paths and the Hapara Teacher Dashboard for effortless maintenance of a classroom’s Google Apps activity.

We’re excited by how educators continue to find new ways to use the web and discover web resources to help them teach and engage with students. We look forward to sharing more of your stories in the new year.

Google Apps Vault now available to existing Apps and EDU customers

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Posted by Jerry Hong, Product Manager, Google Enterprise

Since we launched Google Apps Vault, many businesses have adopted it to archive, retain and manage business critical information. Until now, Vault was available only to new and recent Google Apps customers. Starting today, Vault is available to existing Apps customers that purchased Google Apps online, directly from Google. Vault is also now available to Google Apps for Education customers.

Google Apps Vault helps protect organizations of all sizes from lawsuits by enabling organizations to find and preserve email messages that may be relevant to a particular lawsuit. That saves time, effort, and costs associated with responding to litigation or other investigations. Google Apps Vault can also help if an employee leaves abruptly and the organization needs to understand the status of the employee’s projects, Vault will help find the needed information. For educational institutions, Google Apps Vault can help in responding to open records requests.

Vault can be added to an existing Apps account for $5/user/month. If you purchased Google Apps online, directly from us, you can purchase Vault from your Apps Control Panel. If you are a Google Apps for Education customer interested in Vault you can contact us for more information.

For customers that purchased Google Apps from a reseller, prior to August 1st, 2012, we are working to enable Vault for online purchase through resellers and we’ll announce that when it’s ready.

Google Apps for Education in Latin America

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Posted by Carlos Gonzalez, Google Apps Team

At Google, we’re always excited to see how educators around the world use technology to transform teaching practices and models. In Latin America, for example, thousands of schools and universities have already adopted Google Apps for Education to teach and collaborate in the cloud.

One such university in Latin America is Universidad Austral, a higher education institution in Buenos Aires, Argentina. In 2007, the University’s Law School migrated to Google Apps for Education so students could access course materials anytime and anywhere, whether in class, in the library or at home. Faculty members use Google Drive to distribute lesson materials and Google Calendar to keep students informed about any changes in the location, time and agenda of lectures. Also, all Law Degree students receive a tablet configured with their Google Apps account and syllabus, which reduces the use of photocopies, provides a digital repository of reference materials, enables mobility and encourages class participation during case study discussions.


After the Law School's positive experience with Google Apps for Education, the Education School at Universidad Austral also decided to go Google. Since migrating in 2011, the Education School has been using Google Sites to build course portals, which house lesson plans, resources, class calendars, videos and presentations. These course portals serve as virtual learning environments, which educators tailor with resources of the Web 2.0, like interactive gadgets embedded in Google Sites.

But Universidad Austral is just one example of how schools in Latin America are using Google Apps for Education. Servicio Nacional de Aprendizaje (SENA) and Corporación Unificada Nacional (CUN) in Colombia, Instituto Lux in Mexico, and Universidade Federal de Pernambuco in Brazil also use Google Apps to integrate technology into the classroom.

We're inspired by educators around the world who are reinventing the way we teach and learn with the use of technology. This motivates us even more to continue working on our products to help educational institutions shape the future of education. Learn more about Google Apps for Education.

Quickoffice + Google Apps = better document conversion and an iPad app

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Posted by Jonathan Rochelle, Director of Product Management, Google Drive

Since the Quickoffice team joined Google a few months ago, we’ve been working to make it easier for you to work with your legacy Microsoft Office files -- both by converting them to Google documents and by editing them directly in Quickoffice.

Better conversion to Google Docs, Sheets and Slides
You’ve always had the option to convert documents from popular formats into Google Docs, where you can share and work together in real-time. In the past few months, we’ve incorporated Quickoffice conversion technology into this process so your Microsoft Word, Excel and Powerpoint files look even better when you convert them to Google Docs, Sheets and Slides, respectively.

Left: Old conversion of Excel to Google SheetsRight: Improved conversion after integrating Quickoffice technology
Using Quickoffice to edit Office files on your iPad
Converting old files to Google Docs, Sheets and Slides is the easiest way to share and work together, but perhaps not everyone you work with has gone Google yet. To complement what you can do with Google documents, we’re also making it easier for you to make quick edits to Microsoft Word, Excel and Powerpoint files without conversion. Starting today, the Quickoffice iPad app is available for free to all Apps for Business customers, and iPhone and Android versions are on the way. With the app, you can open and edit any Office files you’ve stored in Google Drive right from your iPad.


Whether you’re converting Office files to Google documents or you just need to make a couple quick edits without converting, it should be easy to get work done whenever you need to, on any device. Stay tuned for more document conversion and mobile editing improvements in 2013.

Update: At launch, only Google Apps for Business users who are allowed to use Drive apps by their administrator will be able to use this version of the Quickoffice app. Learn more in our Help Center.

K-pop goes global with Google Apps

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Posted by Jeff Son, Strategy Manager, YG Entertainment

Editors note: Today's guest blogger is Jeff Son, Strategy Manager at YG Entertainment, a record label and talent agency based in Seoul, South Korea.

YG Entertainment is a record label and talent agency based in Seoul, South Korea, specializing in R&B and hip hop music. We represent some of the biggest names in Korean music including BIGBANG, 2NE1, Lee Hi — and of course, rapper PSY, whose “Gangnam Style” recently became the most popular YouTube video of all time.



Over the last few years, we have been working hard to bring the best of K-Pop to the world. In the last two weeks alone, PSY has been busy touring the United States, 2NE1 have been touring South East Asia, and Big Bang has been touring Japan.



With artists all over the world and a third of our staff out of the country all the time, we need a communication system we can rely on. Prior to moving to Google Apps, our email system was run from a local Korean server. This was fine while we were in Korea, but was unreliable when working internationally. When looking for alternatives, we wanted mobility, speed and stability for teams and artists on the go. As a creative business using both Macintosh and Windows, we also wanted something which would be compatible with both operating systems.

Google Apps worked well with all these requirements. Since making the switch to Gmail in June this year we’ve noticed a big increase in email reliability. We’ve also found the mobile experience is much better. Staff use smartphones and tablets to access Gmail and Calendar and find it much more intuitive than our previous system. We also like that Google Apps is priced according to the number of accounts, not the amount of storage that you use, so we only pay for what we use.

As we continue to expand globally, nurturing Korean talent and bring stars like PSY onto the world stage, we’re confident knowing that Google Apps can scale with us.

Cloud computing enabling entrepreneurship in Africa

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Posted by Zafir Khan, Google App Engine Team

(Cross-posted on the Official Google Blog.)

In 2007, 33-year-old Vuyile moved to Cape Town from rural South Africa in search of work. Unable to complete high school, he worked as a night shift security guard earning $500/month to support his family. During the rush hour commute from his home in Khayelitsha, Vuyile realized that he could earn extra income by selling prepaid mobile airtime vouchers to other commuters on the train.

In rural areas, it’s common to use prepaid vouchers to pay for basic services such as electricity, insurance and airtime for mobile phones. But it’s often difficult to distribute physical vouchers because of the risk of theft and fraud.

Nomanini, a startup based in South Africa, built a device that enables local entrepreneurs like Vuyile to sell prepaid mobile services in their communities. The Lula (which means “easy” in colloquial Zulu), is a portable voucher sales terminal that is used on-the-go by people ranging from taxi drivers to street vendors. It generates and prints codes which people purchase to add minutes to their mobile phones.

Today, Vuyile sells vouchers on the train for cash payment, and earns a commission weekly. Since he started using the Lula, he’s seen his monthly income increase by 20 percent.

Vuyile prints a voucher from his Lula
Nomanini founders Vahid and Ali Monadjem wanted to make mobile services widely available in areas where they had been inaccessible, or where—in a region where the average person makes less than $200/month—people simply couldn’t afford them. By creating a low-cost and easy-to-use product, Nomanini could enable entrepreneurs in Africa to go to deep rural areas and create businesses for themselves.

In order to build a scalable and reliable backend system to keep the Lula running, Nomanini chose to run on Google App Engine. Their development team doesn’t have to spend time setting up their own servers and can instead run on the same infrastructure that powers Google’s own applications. They can focus on building their backend systems and easily deploy code to Google’s data centers. When Vuyile makes a sale, he presses a few buttons, App Engine processes the request, and the voucher prints in seconds.

Last month, 40,000 people bought airtime through the Lula, and Nomanini hopes to grow this number to 1 million per month next year. While platforms like App Engine are typically used to build web or smartphone apps, entrepreneurs like Vahid and Ali are finding innovative ways to leverage this technology by building their own devices and connecting them to App Engine. Vahid tells us: “We’re a uniquely born and bred African solution, and we have great potential to take this to the rest of Africa and wider emerging markets. We could not easily scale this fast without running on Google App Engine.”

To learn more about the technical implementation used by Nomanini, read their guest post on the Google App Engine blog.

A year in review: work the way you live

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Posted by Amit Singh, President, Google Enterprise

Ten years ago, business technology was at the forefront of innovation and productivity. But there’s a fundamental shift underway: in the last few years, consumer technology has begun to outpace business technology. People have fallen in love with the simplicity and freedom of living in the cloud with the help of modern browsers and smartphones—and they want to bring that experience to the workplace.

This is where Google comes in. For the better part of the past decade, we’ve worked to extend our popular consumer products—everything from Gmail and Google Drive to Maps, Google+ and Search—to meet your business needs. It should be easy for you to work better together, from anywhere, with secure (and simple!) tools. Here’s a look back at some key highlights from 2012.

Work securely...
Keeping your information secure is one of our top priorities. To that end, domain administrators can now require their employees to use 2-step verification, an additional layer of security that reduces the chance of unauthorized account access. Your company can also use Google Apps Vault, a solution for managing and archiving critical information for legal and regulatory reasons. If your business operates outside the U.S., we now offer Model Contract Clauses as an additional way to comply with the European Commission’s Data Protection Directive. Finally, Google Apps received ISO 27001 certification, ensuring our systems meet one of the most widely, internationally accepted independent security standards.

… anytime, anywhere...
It should be easy to get work done – anytime, on any device, with anyone. With offline editing in Chrome, you can now create and edit Google documents and leave comments even when you don’t have an Internet connection. Any changes you make will be automatically synced when you get back online. When you’re travelling, you can also edit Google documents and spreadsheets using the Drive app on your iPhone, iPad or Android device. Just like on your computer, you’ll be able to see other people’s edits instantly as they’re made.

If your business has workers on the go, Google Maps Coordinate combines the power of Google’s mapping technologies with modern smartphones to help you improve communication with employees in the field. In addition, the Google Play Private Channel lets you distribute internal apps to your employees who use Android devices. The new Chromebooks and Chromeboxes we launched with our partners are secure and easy to manage, which makes them especially great devices for 1-to-1 programs in schools, additional laptops for office workers, or desktop units for multiple users in a call center. (And we’re honored that Inc. Magazine named the Chromebox one of the best business gadgets of 2012.)


...with simple tools...
We’ve also focused on making our products simpler and easier for you to use – both at home and at work. We introduced Google Drive as a single place for you to create, share, collaborate and keep all your work. You can now insert files (up to 10GB) from Drive directly into an email without leaving your Gmail inbox, and you can share work from Drive on Google+. You and up to 14 colleagues can join a Google+ hangout directly from a calendar entry or your email inbox. Once inside a hangout, you can open a Google Doc for everyone to see and work on simultaneously. And if your company uses Chrome along with Google Apps, you can now call or email us for help with Chrome.

With the Google Search Appliance 7.0, you can search for a document on your company’s intranet just as easily as you’d search for a holiday recipe on Google.com. And if your business relies on geographic data—say, to map gas pipelines or help customers locate your store—you can use Google Maps and Earth Enterprise to visualize your data on the Google Maps interface you’re already familiar with.



...supported by partners and Google infrastructure
Whether it’s Apps for Business, Maps Coordinate, or just a Google search, most Google services you use are possible only because of the powerful and energy-efficient infrastructure we’ve built over the years. This year, we worked to bring you more direct access to this infrastructure to help run your businesses and applications in the cloud. Compute Engine lets your business run virtual machines in Google’s data centers and BigQuery helps you quickly analyze big sets of data to gain business insights. Google Cloud Platform also offers more European datacenter support and lower prices for Cloud Storage.

The new Google Cloud Platform Partner Program ensures that partners have the tools and training to help your business meet its IT needs. And the Google Enterprise Partner Search makes it easy for you to find one of our 6,000 Google Apps Resellers with the services you’re looking for – from setup and user training to email migration, management services and support.
* * *
Work doesn’t always need to feel like work. Leaders in every industry—from retail, media and manufacturing to transportation, education and government—are adopting this notion, which we call “going Google.” Going Google means something different for everyone: starting a wine business with your two best friends, trying to build a bear-proof cooler, or keeping citizens safe. But we all have the common goal of bringing our organization into the future so we can work the way we live.

Google Play Private Channel: Your own Google Play store

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Google Apps domains can now distribute internal Android apps to users at their organization through the Google Play Private Channel. This private channel is restricted to users in the domain and can be used to host internal corporate Android apps like a mobile company directory app.

Versions included:
Google Apps for Business, Education and Government

For more information:
http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2012/12/a-new-way-to-distribute-your-internal.html
http://support.google.com/a/bin/answer.py?&answer=2494992

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Changes to Google Apps packages

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Starting today, we are no longer accepting new signups for the free version of Google Apps. The option to switch to this version will no longer be available in 30 days.

This change has no impact on customers who are already using the free version. They can continue to use Google Apps for free.

For more information:
http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2012/12/changes-to-google-apps-for-businesses.html
http://support.google.com/a/bin/answer.py?answer=2855120

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Restrict Admin Privileges to Organizational Units

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Google Apps super admins now have the ability to designate users as admins for specific organizational units. Users in a domain can be arranged in organizational units to better control the services and features they have access to.

Editions included:
Google Apps for Business, Government and Education

For more information:
http://support.google.com/a/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=182433
http://support.google.com/a/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=172176

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QuickOffice for Google Apps for Business (iPad only)

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Starting today, Google Apps for Business users can download QuickOffice for the iPad for free from the App Store. This exclusive version of QuickOffice automatically syncs with Google Drive and supports two factor authentication.

With the app, users can open and edit any Microsoft Word, Excel or Powerpoint file stored in Google Drive right from their iPad. iPhone and Android versions of this app for Google Apps for Business customers will be available in the future.

Editions included:
Google Apps for Business

For more information:
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/quickoffice-exclusively-for/id578386521
http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2012/12/quickoffice-google-apps-better-document.html

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Enforce SSL on the contacts APIs

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Google Apps administrators now have the ability to enforce SSL connections on the Contacts APIs through a setting in the control panel. This setting provides added security against session hijacking and user impersonation. It affects these APIs:

- Contacts API
- Domain Shared Contacts API
- Google Apps Profiles API

Note that this setting will be OFF by default because some widely used legacy contacts applications do not support SSL. Early next year, we will set the Enforce SSL option to ON for all new domains and all existing domains where we do not detect a contacts API request from one of these legacy applications within the previous week.

Editions included:
Google Apps for Business, Education and Government

For more information:
https://support.google.com/a/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=2892234

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Scheduled Release track features update 12/7/12

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No new features to announce.

The following features are intended for release to these domains on December 11th:
Gmail: Users now have the ability to insert files up to 10GB from Drive directly into an email without leaving Gmail. Gmail will automatically check that recipients have access to any files being sent.

Release track:
Scheduled

Editions included:
Google Apps, Google Apps for Business, Government and Education

For more information:
http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2012/11/gmail-and-drive-new-way-to-send-files.html
http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2012/10/introducing-new-compose-in-gmail.html

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Fusion Tables Available for Google Apps for Business

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A limited version of Fusion Tables is now available for administrators to enable in the administrator control panel under Additional Services. When this service is turned on, users will be able to use all features of Fusion Tables except the ability to create a Google Map.

Editions included:
Google Apps for Business, Government and Education

For more information:
http://support.google.com/fusiontables/answer/1657096

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Google Apps Migration for Microsoft Exchange (GAMME) 3.0

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Version 3.0 of Google Apps Migration for Microsoft Exchange (GAMME) is now available for download. It has the following improvements:

- Calendar migration for resources
Migrate calendar resources like meeting rooms from Exchange to Google Apps.

- Public folder migration
Migrate public folders in Exchange to Google Groups using the command line.

- New in-product help
Click on a question mark in the product to get helpful tips on using the tool

Editions included:
Google Apps for Business, Government and Education

For more information:
https://support.google.com/a/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=162794
https://tools.google.com/dlpage/exchangemigration
http://support.google.com/a/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=2840803
http://www.google.com/support/enterprise/static/gapps/docs/admin/en/gapps_exchange_migration/gamme_admin.pdf#page=49

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Google Apps Groups Migration API

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Google Apps administrators now have the ability to programmatically migrate emails into Google Groups using the new Groups Migration API. This API allows developers the ability to build tools that can move shared emails from any data source (typically shared mailboxes, public folders and discussion databases) to their domain’s Google Groups discussion archives.

Editions included:
Google Apps for Business, Education and Government

For more information:
http://googleappsdeveloper.blogspot.com/2012/11/migrating-to-google-apps-just-got-easier.html
https://developers.google.com/google-apps/groups-migration/index

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Scheduled Release track features update 12/14/12

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Gmail: Users using the new compose experience in Gmail now have the ability to insert files up to 10GB from Drive directly into an email . Gmail will automatically check that recipients have access to any files being sent.

The following features are intended for release to these domains on December 18th:
No new features to announce

Release track:
Scheduled

Editions included:
Google Apps, Google Apps for Business, Government and Education

For more information:
http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2012/11/gmail-and-drive-new-way-to-send-files.html
http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2012/10/introducing-new-compose-in-gmail.html

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YouTube's New Interface

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After so many posts about YouTube's experimental interfaces, it's time for the public release. The new interface is rolled out to everyone and you no longer have to change your YouTube cookie to try it.


"On YouTube video always comes first, and with this new design the site gets out of the way and lets content truly shine. Videos are now at the top of the page, with title and social actions below. Also, playlists have been moved up, so you can easily browse through videos while you watch. Now when you subscribe to your favorite channels, we will add them to your Guide and make them available on every page of the site, and on your mobile device, tablet, and TV," explains YouTube.

The guide is actually a sidebar that's now available on every YouTube page and lets you check your subscriptions, your playlists and the video history. You can also see a list of other videos from the previous page, so you can quickly watch another search result, a different video from the same channel or another video from the homepage.

Google's Card-Style OneBoxes

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Google updated the desktop OneBoxes for definitions and local time to match the card layout from Google Now. The same layout is also used in the mobile search UI for most Google OneBoxes.



What's unique about the cards? They're much bigger, they include a lot more information, more white space and more distinctive headers. They stand out more and they're harder to ignore.

{ Thanks, Milivella, Arpit, Mikhail. }

Funny Google Flights Messages

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Google Flights shows some custom messages after you select your favorite flights. Depending on your destination, Google shows messages like "London, baby!", "Ahh, Paris... bon voyage!", "Have a great time in the Eternal City!" (Rome), "Have a great time in the Emerald Isle!" (Dublin), "Enjoy your trip to the Windy City!" (Chicago), "Have a great time in Music City, USA!" (Nashville), "Have a great time in Baltimore, hon!".






For most destinations, Google shows generic messages like "Hope you have fun in Frankfurt!".

Google Reader, "Constantly on the Chopping Block"

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Buzzfeed has an interesting article about the evolution of Google Reader. While the article mostly focuses on the social features that were removed from Google Reader a few months after Google+ was launched, there are some thought-provoking insights from former Google Reader engineers that reveal why the service has never been a priority for Google and why it can always be discontinued.

"In the beginning, the best word I can use is that Google tolerated the project. Then, they gave it — support is too strong a word. They gave it some thought," said Chris Wetherell, the Googler who started the project. Jenna Bilotta, a former user experience designer at Google, has a slightly different opinion: "Everyone from Google used Reader, from Larry and Sergey to the newest engineers. It's such a beloved project. Still, it was just in this limbo space. It wasn't really supported, but it wasn't actively being harmed."

The difficulty was that Reader users, while hyperengaged with the product, never snowballed into the tens or hundreds of millions. Brian Shih became the product manager for Reader in the fall of 2008. "If Reader were its own startup, it's the kind of company that Google would have bought. Because we were at Google, when you stack it up against some of these products, it's tiny and isn't worth the investment," he said. At one point, Shih remembers, engineers were pulled off Reader to work on OpenSocial, a "half-baked" development platform that never amounted to much. "There was always a political fight internally on keeping people staffed on this little project," he recalled. Someone hung a sign in the Reader offices that said "DAYS SINCE LAST THREAT OF CANCELLATION." The number was almost always zero. At the same time, user growth — while small next to Gmail's hundreds of millions — more than doubled under Shih's tenure. But the "senior types," as Bilotta remembers, "would look at absolute user numbers. They wouldn't look at market saturation. So Reader was constantly on the chopping block."

iGoogle, a much more popular service, will be discontinued next year and Google Reader's infrastructure is used to show feeds in iGoogle. Hopefully, Google Reader will still be available for some time, but it's mostly wishful thinking.

Google Zeitgeist 2012

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Google's Zeitgeist page for 2012 has a lot of lists of popular searches from different categories and from different countries, so it's easy to find the people, the events, the games, the movies, songs and gadgets that defined the year 2012. It's important to keep in mind that most lists only include the queries with "the highest amount of traffic over a sustained period in 2012 as compared to 2011", so you won't find boring queries like [games] and [music], which are popular every year.

The "movers and shakers" of the year are:

1. Whitney Houston
2. Gangnam style
3. Hurricane Sandy
4. iPad 3
5. Diablo 3
6. Kate Middleton
7. Olympics 2012
8. Amanda Todd
9. Michael Clarke Duncan
10. BBB12 (Big Brother Brasil).


If you look back at the 2011 Zeitgeist list, you'll notice that "Gangnam style" replaces Rebecca Black, iPad 3 replaces both the iPhone 5 and the iPad 2, Diablo 3 replaces Battlefield 3.

The list of popular gadgets includes 6 tablets (iPad 3, iPad Mini, Nexus 7, iPad 4, Microsoft Surface and Kindle Fire), 3 phones (Galaxy S2, Galaxy Note 2, Nokia Lumia 920) and Sony's PlayStation. With so many interesting tablets released this year, it's hard to choose which one to buy.

Sometimes, Google's lists don't make a lot of sense, so you should take them with a grain of salt. Compare these 2 lists for US tech trends (for example, Note 2 is both more popular and less popular than iPhone 5):


Download the entire Zeitgeist collection [PDF] and don't miss the cool Easter Egg that shows a "Gangnam style" Android animation: mouse over the colorful bar at the bottom of the Zeitgeist page and click the robot.


{ Thanks, Arpit. }

Honouring computing’s 1843 visionary, Lady Ada Lovelace

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Last year, a group of us were lucky enough to visit the U.K. Prime Minister’s residence at 10 Downing Street, as part of the Silicon Valley Comes to the U.K. initiative. While there, we asked about some of the paintings on the wall. When we got to a large portrait of a regally dressed woman, our host said “and of course, that’s Lady Lovelace.” So much of world history leaves out or minimizes the contributions of women, and so “of course” most of us had no idea who she was. You can imagine our surprise when we learned she was considered by some to be the world’s first computer programmer—having published the first algorithm intended for use on Charles Babbage’s Analytical Engine.

Lady Ada Lovelace, painted by Margaret Carpenter in 1836, from the U.K. Government Art Collection. Photo thanks to Wikimedia Commons.
Augusta Ada King, Countess of Lovelace, was born nearly two centuries ago in 1815. Her mother, mathematician Anne Isabelle Milbanke, was determined Ada would not fall prey to the same immoralities as Ada’s father, the “mad, bad and dangerous to know” poet Lord Byron. Thus, in an attempt to thwart any similar tendencies, she had Ada tutored in science and mathematics from a young age. It’s fair to say this did not completely work, as Ada went on to lead a rather colourful life. However it did fortuitously result in Ada becoming a mathematician like her mother, and pursuing what she termed “poetical science.”

After a chance encounter when aged 17, Ada became friends with Charles Babbage and grew fascinated by his idea to build an “Analytical Engine.” In 1843 Ada published a description of Babbage's machine. While partly a translation of an Italian work, Ada added voluminous self-penned notes, which made up the bulk of the document. Included in her notes were step-by-step instructions for how the machine could calculate a sequence of Bernoulli numbers, prepared in collaboration with Babbage. In effect, this was the world’s first published algorithm.

Most importantly, the notes set out Ada's far-reaching vision for what the Analytical Engine signified. While Babbage saw it as a mathematical calculator, Ada understood it had much more potential. She realised it was, in essence, a machine that could manipulate symbols in accordance with defined rules, and—crucially—that there was no reason the symbols had to represent only numbers and equations.

“The Analytical Engine weaves algebraic patterns just as the Jacquard loom weaves flowers and leaves.” Ada Lovelace, 1843

As Ada eloquently argued, such a device could do far more than mathematics. She even mused about its potential to compose music:

“Supposing, for instance, that the fundamental relations of pitched sounds in the science of harmony and of musical composition were susceptible of such expression and adaptations, the engine might compose elaborate and scientific pieces of music of any degree of complexity or extent.”

This was an astounding conceptual leap from calculation to computing. Ada envisaged a day when a single machine would be capable of a myriad of tasks, limited only by the creativity of its programmer. At the time—nearly a century before the first computers were built—it was a flash of brilliance.

After our visit to Downing Street, we returned to the U.S. determined to learn more about Ada, and to revive her memory. Today, her birthday, is an apt moment. In addition to this post, Google is honouring Ada with a doodle in recognition of her prophetic vision for computing.

Design of doodle by Kevin Laughlin
Unfortunately, Babbage's machines were never built in his lifetime, and Ada's vision of computing was lost to obscurity for more than a century. It wasn’t until 1991 that the Science Museum London built Babbage’s Difference Engine from his original drawings. That machine is now on show there, and a second one is now at the Computer History Museum in California. Plans are now afoot to build a replica of the Analytic Engine—so perhaps Ada’s algorithm will at last be run on the machine for which it was intended.

Ada's experience is sadly all too familiar. Too often, the contributions of women in science and technology are left untold, and to fade from view. While Ada’s story has been rediscovered, many others remain little known. That's why initiatives such as Ada Lovelace Day are so valuable, as a catalyst for raising the profile of women in science, past and present. Several wonderful biographies of Ada have been written already, and biographer Walter Isaacson has turned his attention to Ada as part of his next book.

Visibility is also the reason why we launched the Women Techmakers series on GDL, to help shine a light on the roles and contributions of the many talented technical women in our industry today. We hope our series will complement other efforts to raise the profile of women, such as the new AOL/PBS supported website and documentary Makers.com or the work of Academy Award-winning actress Geena Davis on SeeJane to improve gender balance and reduce stereotypes in childrens’ television globally.

We hope today's doodle inspires people to find out more about Ada, and about the contributions made by women in general to science and technology.

Posted by Megan Smith, VP, Google[x] and Lynette Webb, Senior Manager, External Relations

Supporting Israel’s “start-up nation”

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In March, we launched Campus London to help support the vibrant start-up community there and help energize the U.K. Internet economy. Today, we’re launching Campus Tel Aviv—a one-floor event & community space in downtown Tel Aviv, made available to early stage start-ups and developers.

With the Internet economy contributing 6.4 percent of Israel’s GDP and with the world’s second largest center of tech start-ups after Silicon Valley, it’s no wonder that Israel is commonly referred to as “start-up nation.” For some time now, we’ve been supporting Internet and mobile entrepreneurs in Israel with tech talks, events and hackathons. We hope that Campus Tel Aviv will enable us to do more to support local innovation.

The Campus space will be used by start-ups and partners for events, a “device lab” will give developers the chance to try out projects on a range of devices, and entrepreneurs will get access to Google’s teams and other experts. We’re also working with tech incubators, accelerator programs and other partners to bring their start-ups to Campus for an initiative called “Launch Pad.” It’s a two-week “bootcamp” for more than 100 start-ups each year, aimed at enhancing existing accelerator programs by providing expertise in user experience and design, product strategy, global marketing, business development and more.

At the launch of Campus Tel Aviv—from left to right, Mr. Benjamin Netanyahu (Israeli Prime Minister), Meir Brand (Managing Director, Google Israel, Greece, South & Sub-Saharan Africa), Yossi Matias (Head of Israel R&D Center).
In 1998, when Larry and Sergey founded Google, we were a start-up in a garage. In many ways, we remain a start-up at heart, and we’re committed to helping new entrepreneurs and developers around the world succeed. We hope that Campus Tel Aviv will contribute to future Israeli tech innovation and, in doing so, make the web and the mobile space better. You can find out more about Campus Tel Aviv on our website.

Posted by Amir Shevat, Developer Relations Manager & Eyal Miller, New Business Development - Co-leads, Campus Tel Aviv

Chromebooks for classrooms: $99 for the holidays

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For many students and teachers, the hassles of traditional computing often prevent them from making the most of technology in the classroom. Schools that have adopted Chromebooks, however, have been able to bring the web’s vast educational resources—whether it’s conducting real-time research or collaborating on group projects—right into the classroom. Chromebooks are fast, easily sharable, and require almost no maintenance. Today more than 1,000 schools have adopted Chromebooks in classrooms, including some school districts like Richland School District Two (S.C.), Leyden High School District (Ill.), and Council Bluffs Community School District (Iowa) who have deployed Chromebooks to tens of thousands of students.

To help budget-strapped classrooms across the country, we’re working with DonorsChoose.org, an online charity that connects donors directly to public school classroom needs. For the holiday season, teachers can request the Samsung Series 5 Chromebook—the most widely deployed Chromebook in schools—at a special, discounted price of $99 including hardware, management and support.

If you’re a full-time public school teacher in the U.S., visit DonorsChoose.org and follow the instructions to take advantage of this opportunity by December 21, 2012. Your request will be posted on DonorsChoose.org where anyone can make a donation to support your classroom. When you reach your funding goal, you’ll receive your Chromebooks from Lakeshore Learning, DonorsChoose.org’s exclusive fulfillment partner for this program.

If you’re not a teacher, please share this opportunity with the teachers who have made a difference in your life! Or if you’re interested in supporting a classroom directly, read through the list of Chromebook projects and donate what you can. Be sure to check back often for new projects.

Thank you for your support in giving the gift of hassle-free technology to teachers and students. Working together, we can ensure “The virus ate my homework” is never uttered in a classroom again, and we can help classrooms get off to a strong start in the New Year!

Happy holidays.


Update Dec 11: We’ve seen a tremendous response—thanks to all the teachers who have applied so far! Please check DonorsChoose.org for the latest status of the program.

Posted by Rajen Sheth, Group Product Manager

Steel + silicon = business success in Detroit

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From time to time we invite guests to post about items of interest and are pleased to have Linzie Venegas join us today. Linzie is head of sales and marketing for Ideal Shield, a manufacturing company in Detroit, Mich. that specializes in bumper post sleeves. Based in a city forged in tradition and steel, Ideal Shield has seen great success on the web—a story Linzie tells us in this post. -Ed.

When my great-grandparents moved from Mexico to Detroit in 1917, they were looking for a better life. They had no idea that one day their grandson, my father Frank Venegas, would invent a product and start a business that would help transform their adopted hometown. Thanks to my dad’s hard work and a little help from the web, that’s exactly what Ideal Shield has done.

Ideal Shield specializes in manufacturing bumper post sleeves. You may have seen these around—they’re colorful covers that slide over the steel pipes that keep cars from running into buildings. As a young child, my first job at Ideal was to assemble mailers for potential customers. Our mailers were unique—I would place a pack of jelly beans into each envelope. Talk about a great way to get a high “clickthrough rate!” Today, I head sales and marketing for the company, and we’ve taken our family business online with phenomenal results.

Ideal Shield’s father-daughter team Frank and Linzie Venegas in the factory surrounded by bumper post sleeves and guard rails.
We began using Google AdWords in 2004 to help potential customers find our product because many people didn’t know what it was. We were drawn to AdWords because everyone could see our ads—but we only had to pay for the customers who clicked through to our website. We also found that the leads were very qualified and had a higher close rate than leads from other sources. So far this year, for every $1 we've spent on AdWords we’ve gotten back $22. We’ve been able to have great success—without jelly beans!—using Google AdWords.

The energy we’ve put into our online presence has produced tremendous growth for our business; we’ve been able to grow our workforce by 20 percent. We’ve also focused on building our local community of Southwest Detroit. Each year we hire many interns from the local high school, Detroit Cristo Rey, and teach them skills that will last a lifetime. We’ve outfitted the junior and senior classes at Detroit Cristo Rey with Chromebooks so that they’ll have access to the power of the web anywhere, and many teachers there use the free Google Apps for Education suite with their students. This year, we were proud to hear that Detroit Cristo Rey achieved a 100% graduation rate and a 100% college acceptance rate. We also work with the Michigan Minority Business Development Council to teach other small businesses in the community the importance of an online strategy and how the web can help small businesses thrive.

My dad started Ideal with himself, my mother and a couple of laborers; today this family business has more than 35 employees and annual sales of $14 million. With help from the web, his hard work, determination and “out of the box” thinking have made Ideal a symbol of strength and renewal in Southwest Detroit. My father has always told me that if you take care of the community, the community will take care of you. Detroit is our community—it’s our heart, it’s our home. We’ve been surprised and delighted at how much the web has contributed to Ideal Shield, and we’re happy to share that success with Detroit. We can’t wait to do more!



Posted by Linzie Venegas, Head of Sales and Marketing, Ideal Shield Detroit

The evolution of This Exquisite Forest

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A few months ago we released This Exquisite Forest, a Chrome Experiment that lets you create collaborative animations using an online drawing tool. Since then, thousands of people from all over the world have contributed to the project, creating unique animations like Looking Up / Looking Down, Wine after Coffee and Animated Typography. For any of these animations, you can click the button in the lower right to add to the story and branch it in a new direction.


Today, we’d like to share The Endless Theater, a new way to wander the forest by viewing a continuous stream of different animations. In addition, now you can embed animations directly into your site or blog, so it’s even easier to share your work with the world. Just go into the lightbox view and click “Embed.”



A project of this scale and diversity is really only possible on the web, where people can view and contribute from all over the world using only a browser. Thank you all for making the forest so full of life. Please continue to explore, find your favorite animations, and add to the story.

Posted by Aaron Koblin, Creative Lab

(Cross-posted from the Chrome blog)

Building a better map of Europe

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Posted by Brian McClendon, Vice President, Google Maps and Google Earth

Whether your business is building a solution to map gas pipelines or developing an easier way for people to locate your store, incorporating Google Maps into an application or website can help your customers get the information they need. As part of our ongoing effort to build the most comprehensive and accurate maps of the ever-changing world, today we’re releasing updated maps for 10 countries and regions in Europe.

New maps are available in Andorra, Bulgaria, Estonia, Gibraltar, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovakia, Slovenia and Spain. Today’s launch includes updates to core map elements like roads and addresses in each of these locations, but that’s not all: we’ve also added important new details like walking paths, ferry lines, building outlines, park boundaries, university campuses and more.


We believe that this combination of new and updated data provides a richer and more realistic Google Maps experience for both consumers and enterprise users. With up-to-date data and maps features, your business can rely on the Google Maps API to enhance your custom mapping applications. Learn more about the Google Maps API for Business.

The National Archives is going Google

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Posted by Anne Billak, Federal Civilian Account Manager

The National Archives and Record Administration preserves a broad range of this country’s most important historical documents, ranging from the Emancipation Proclamation to maps of the Louisiana Purchase to Thomas Edison’s patent applications. Together with Google reseller Unisys, the Archives will move its 4,500 employees and contractors to Google Apps for Government in 2013.

Known as the nation’s record keeper, the Archives protects and provides public access to more than 10 billion pages of textual records, in addition to maps, photographs, videos and more than 133 terabytes of electronic records. The National Archives Building in Washington, DC gives visitors the opportunity to come face-to-face with significant documents in United States history, such as the Declaration of Independence. The Archives also manages Presidential libraries across the country for every president dating back to Herbert Hoover.


Memorandum of a fee paid by Thomas Edison for a patent on "Electric Lamps."
(image courtesy of the National Archives)
The Archives joins a growing list of federal agencies including the General Services Administration, NOAA and Idaho National Laboratory who have chosen Google and Unisys to provide their employees with cloud-based email and collaboration tools.

Google Apps will improve the ability of Archives employees in 44 locations nationwide to collaborate with one another, as well as with their customers and partners outside the agency. Archives employees across the nation will also get anytime, anywhere access to their data. What’s more, the FISMA-certified Google tools will keep the Archives’ data safe while also providing a reliable system with built-in failover and disaster recovery.

Google Earth and Maps help save lives and protect property when disasters strike

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Posted by Rick Hinrichs, Director of Disaster Emergency Services, Red Cross - San Diego/Imperial Counties Chapter.

Editors note:Today’s guest blogger is Rick Hinrichs from the Red Cross - San Diego/Imperial Counties Chapter. We recently sat down with him to discuss how his organization stays coordinated during disasters using Google Earth and Maps. To learn more, watch this video.

In the event of a natural disaster or unexpected emergency, a quick and effective response can mean the difference between life and death. We at the Red Cross can always be counted on to assist on the front lines of these disasters and emergencies.

When the 2007 wildfires struck Southern California, 500,000 people were told to evacuate their homes in 30 minutes, but our San Diego command center wasn't fully staffed until four hours later. We scrambled to collect information and plan a strategy over the phone and through email. It was clear we needed a more efficient solution for better situational awareness and a common operating picture for the Red Cross command center, our volunteers and the citizens we serve.

In response, our San Diego/Imperial Counties Chapter of the Red Cross implemented a new response system built on Google Earth and Maps. Our map has dozens of data layers that can be used in a disaster situation to display, in real-time, everything from the location of our volunteers to shelters, food trucks, and medical supplies. This map can also be easily shared with other emergency management agencies outside of Southern California.

Now, volunteers and the public can pull up the Red Cross’ web-based emergency response map on their smartphones or tablets while out in the field. They can see safe routes to travel, hospital locations and other places to access resources during a disaster. Google Earth and Maps require no additional training; our volunteers already know how to use them.

Our chapter responds to a disaster once every 28 hours or so, from house fires and SWAT incidents to search and rescue operations. By mapping these locations on Google Earth and Maps, we can see where our assets are, determine where the most incidents occur, and better target our outreach and effectiveness.

The bottom line: the Red Cross is committed to protecting property and lives, and Google Earth and Maps help us do a much better job.

Changes to Google Apps for businesses

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Posted by Clay Bavor, Director of Product Management, Google Apps

Google Apps started with the simple idea that Gmail could help businesses and schools work better together without the hassles of managing software and servers. As we grew from a handful of customers to a few hundred, we expanded to offer a premium business version of Google Apps. Fast forward to today and Google Apps is used by millions of businesses. We’ve also added versions for governments, universities and schools.

When we launched the premium business version we kept our free, basic version as well. Both businesses and individuals signed up for this version, but time has shown that in practice, the experience isn't quite right for either group. Businesses quickly outgrow the basic version and want things like 24/7 customer support and larger inboxes. Similarly, consumers often have to wait to get new features while we make them business-ready.

With this in mind, we’ve decided to make things very straightforward. Starting today for all new customers:

• Individuals wishing to use Google’s web apps like Gmail and Google Drive should create a free personal Google Account, which provides a seamless experience across all of our web services on any device.
• For Businesses, instead of two versions, there will be one. Companies of all sizes will sign up for our premium version, Google Apps for Business, which includes 24/7 phone support for any issue, a 25GB inbox, and a 99.9% uptime guarantee with no scheduled downtime. Pricing is still $50 per user, per year.

Please note this change has no impact on our existing customers, including those using the free version. And as before, Google Apps for Education will be available as a free service for schools and universities. Also, as the first cloud productivity suite with FISMA certification, we’ll continue to offer Google Apps for Government for $50 per user, per year.

With focus we’ll be able to do even more for our business customers. We’re excited about the opportunity to push Google Apps further so our customers can do what matters most to them–whether that’s scooping ice cream, changing the face of healthcare or contributing to lifelong learning.

The Gmail app for iPhone and iPad: version 2.0

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Posted by Matthew Izatt, Product Manager

Six months ago, our team set out to completely rebuild the Gmail app for iPhone and iPad to give you you a faster, sleeker, and easier experience on iOS. The result? Version 2.0. With version 2.0 of the app, you'll get a totally new look and feel, plus a bunch of improvements like profile pictures in messages, numerous new animations from swivels to transitions and infinite scrolling in the message lists.
The app also adds many new time-saving features. For example, when you search, autocomplete predictions will appear as you type, shaving off precious seconds (and typos). Plus, you can RSVP to Google Calendar invites as well as +1 and comment on Google+ posts directly from the app.
Last, but certainly not least, we've added a feature many of you have been waiting for: multiple account support. You can now login to up to five Google Accounts from the menu and switch between them with a couple taps.
You can download the app right now from the App Store. We're excited to hear what you think!

Help train the next generation of computer scientists with a CS4HS grant from Google

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It’s that time of year: school is in full swing, the holidays are just around the corner, and we’re once again accepting proposals for our Computer Science for High School (CS4HS) grants. CS4HS is a “train the trainer” program that aims to give teachers the tools they need in order to bring computer science and computational thinking into the classroom.

With a grant from Google, university, college and technical college faculty develop these three to five day workshops—hands-on, interactive opportunities for K-12 teachers to learn how to teach CS to their students. Some programs are geared toward CS teachers, while others are for non-CS teachers who want to incorporate computer science into their curriculum. No two programs are exactly alike, and it is the creative and passionate material that organizers develop which makes this program so unique—and successful.

2013 marks the fifth consecutive year for our CS4HS program, and we’ve grown significantly. Hundreds of students and thousands of teachers have been through these workshops to date, and our program has spread to include places in Africa, Australia, Canada, China, Europe, the Middle East, New Zealand and the U.S. Our alumni are connected to each other, other educators and organizers through our teacher’s forum, which also enables K-12 teachers interested in CS education to join the discussion and ask questions.



We’re accepting applications on our website from now until February 16, 2013. To qualify, you must work for an accredited university, college or technical school in one of the qualifying regions. Each region has a slightly different application process, so make sure to read up on your area at www.cs4hs.com.

If you’re not a university faculty member, but still want to be involved, reach out to a local area university and encourage the CS Chairperson to apply; peruse information on our K-12 educators page to start bringing CS into your classroom; and check for updates on our website starting in March to find a program near you.

We’re excited to help even more educators learn how to bring computer science to their students, whether they’re teaching CS, math, history, or any other subject. Together, we can start the next generation of CS professionals on their way.

Posted by Erin Mindell, Program Manager, Google Education