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Happy birthday, Freddie Mercury
September 4, 2011
From time to time we invite guests to post about items of interest and are thrilled to have Brian May join us to talk about friend and bandmate Freddie Mercury.
Our doodle celebrating Freddie's birthday can be seen around the world on September 5 and, out of respect for Labor Day, in the U.S. on September 6.
A guitarist and songwriter, Brian May is a founding member of Queen and wrote many of the band’s hits, including “We Will Rock You,” “The Show Must Go On” and “I Want It All.” Brian is also a respected solo artist and one of the founders of Freddie for a Day (
www.freddieforaday.com
), an organization helping to fight HIV/AIDS globally. - Ed.
I was first introduced to Freddie Mercury—a paradoxically shy yet flamboyant young man—at the side of the stage at one of our early gigs as the group “SMILE.” He told me he was excited by how we played, he had some ideas—and he could sing! I'm not sure we took him very seriously, but he did have the air of someone who knew he was right. He was a frail but energised dandy, with seemingly impossible dreams and a wicked twinkle in his eye. A while later we had the opportunity to actually see him sing ... and it was scary! He was wild and untutored, but massively charismatic. Soon, he began his evolution into a world-class vocal talent, right in front of our eyes.
Freddie was fully focused, never allowing anything or anyone to get in the way of his vision for the future. He was truly a free spirit. There are not many of these in the world. To achieve this, you have to be, like Freddie, fearless—unafraid of upsetting anyone's apple cart.
Some people imagine Freddie as the fiery, difficult diva who required everyone around him to compromise. No. In our world, as four artists attempting to paint on the same canvas, Freddie was always the one who could find the compromise—the way to pull it through. If he found himself at odds with any one of us, he would quickly dispel the cloud with a generous gesture, a wisecrack or an impromptu present. I remember one morning after a particularly tense discussion he presented me with a cassette. He had been up most of the night compiling a collage of my guitar solos. "I wanted you to hear them as I hear them, dear," he said. "They're all fab, so I made them into a symphony!"
To create with Freddie was always stimulating to the max. He was daring, always sensing a way to get outside the box. Sometimes he was
too
far out ... and he'd usually be the first to realise it. With a conspiratorial smile he would say "Oh ... did I lose it, dears?!" But usually there was sense in his nonsense—art in his madness. It was liberating. I think he encouraged us all in his way, to believe in our own madness, and the collective mad power of the group Queen.
Freddie would have been 65 this year, and even though physically he is not here, his presence seems more potent than ever. Freddie made the last person at the back of the furthest stand in a stadium feel that he was connected. He gave people proof that a man could achieve his dreams—made them feel that through him they were overcoming their own shyness, and becoming the powerful figure of their ambitions. And he lived life to the full. He devoured life. He celebrated every minute. And, like a great comet, he left a luminous trail which will sparkle for many a generation to come.
Happy birthday Freddie!
Posted by Dr. Brian May, CBE. Guitarist.
Navigating a proposal with Google Maps for mobile
September 2, 2011
I recently decided to propose to my girlfriend, Faigy. I knew I wanted to do something meaningful and —yes—a little over the top, so I decided to put my software engineering skills to work to create the ultimate romantic scavenger hunt. On the road to “The Big Question,” I wanted Faigy to visit places around New York City that were filled with memories of our relationship. My plan was to construct a map of the route and get my girlfriend from one destination to the next, all with the element of surprise. Google Maps gave me the tools I needed to make the magic happen.
View
Faigy & Ari's Engagement Route
in a larger map
I used
My Maps
to plan out
the route
—from the Trader Joe’s we shop at on the Upper West Side, to
Magnolia Bakery
where we spent part of our first date, to Hudson Bar & Lounge where we enjoyed a night of dancing, to
Carnegie Hall
where Faigy once surprised me with tickets to a Beethoven concert, all the way to the lighthouse on
Roosevelt Island
where we went on our second date.
I secretly coordinated with Faigy’s manager at work to give her a Nexus One preloaded with Google Maps for mobile, a camera and instructions to go to the first location. I had a friend stationed at each of the six locations before the final stop to give Faigy a rose, take a picture of her with the roses and make sure she
checked in
with Google Maps. Meanwhile, I anxiously awaited her arrival at the Roosevelt Island lighthouse.
Her phone had a custom mobile app I’d built (with the help of my fellow Google engineers Andrew Oplinger and Matt Keoshkerian). The app would let Faigy check in to each location, then prompt her for a password to find out the next location. I provided each friend with a question to ask Faigy, tied to our memories of that particular place, the answer to which was the password. When Faigy entered the password, the app would automatically initiate
walking navigation
to the next location.
When she got to the checkered pin that marked her last destination, her seventh and final rose also came with a question—but this one was from me, and it wasn’t any ordinary question. I’ll leave it to you to guess what her answer was!
Posted by Ari Gilder, Software Engineer
Google Apps highlights – 9/2/2011
September 2, 2011
This is part of a regular series of Google Apps updates that we post every couple of weeks. Look for the label “
Google Apps highlights
" and subscribe to the series. - Ed.
Over the last few weeks, we added a few frequently-requested improvements to Google Apps, including offline access in Gmail, Calendar and Docs, page numbering in documents, and page-level permissions in Google Sites. If you’ve been waiting for these features, please give them a try!
Work offline in Gmail, Calendar and Docs
You can connect to the Internet in more and more places now, but you probably occasionally find yourself in situations when you can’t use web apps because of spotty connectivity. Now you can
stay productive even without a connection
in Gmail, Calendar and Docs on Chrome, thanks to new offline capabilities for each of these applications.
Free calls home for overseas U.S. Military personnel
On Tuesday, Gmail also added the ability for all U.S. Military personnel with valid .mil email addresses to
call the United States for free
. We appreciate the hardships our troops face, and we hope to make staying in touch with friends and family a little easier for them while they’re deployed.
Page numbers in Google Docs
A while back we added
page headers and footers
in Google Docs, and now you can add
automatic page numbers
at the top or bottom of your pages. We’ve heard from plenty of students and teachers who asked for this feature, so we’re glad to be making Google Docs just a little bit better for them.
Page-level permissions in Google Sites
Sometimes project sites are most useful when the whole team can access everything in the site, but there are other situations—like when you’re sharing a site with a client—when you might not want everyone to have full access. That’s where
page-level permissions
come in handy. It’s a simple way to specify who can see each page in your Google Sites.
Administrative audit history
Another useful feature that we added for organizations this week is
administrative change reporting
. This new area of the control panel lets admins see a record of administrative changes that have been made to their Google Apps setup, including changes to user accounts, application settings, mobile settings and administrative delegation.
Who’s gone Google?
More than 4 million businesses are using Google Apps now, and the wave of organizations switching over continues to accelerate. Yesterday at
Dreamforce
, Eric Schmidt shared a couple new details about the growing momentum in this area, including the fact that more than 5,000 businesses sign up each day, and that there are more than 40 million total active users in organizations using Google Apps.
To get a flavor of how organizations are putting Google Apps to work,
Viocorp
,
North Carolina A&T State University
and
Lamar Advertising
shared their stories over the last few weeks.
Posted by Jeremy Milo, Google Apps Marketing Manager
A fall spring-clean
September 2, 2011
Technology improves, people’s needs change, some bets pay off and others don’t. So, as Larry previewed on our
last earnings call
, today we’re having a fall spring-clean at Google.
Over the next few months we’ll be shutting down a number of products and merging others into existing products as features. The list is below. This will make things much simpler for our users, improving the overall Google experience. It will also mean we can devote more resources to high impact products—the ones that improve the lives of billions of people. All the Googlers working on these projects will be moved over to higher-impact products. As for our users, we’ll communicate directly with them as we make these changes, giving sufficient time to make the transition and enabling them to take their data with them.
Here’s a quick overview of where a number of products and features are headed:
Aardvark
: Aardvark was a start-up we acquired in 2010. An experiment in a new kind of social search, it helped people answer each other’s questions. While Aardvark will be closing, we’ll continue to work on tools that enable people to connect and discover richer knowledge about the world.
Desktop
: In the last few years, there’s been a huge shift from local to cloud-based storage and computing, as well as the integration of search and gadget functionality into most modern operating systems. People now have instant access to their data, whether online or offline. As this was the goal of Google Desktop, the product will be discontinued on September 14, including all the associated APIs, services, plugins, gadgets and support.
Fast Flip
: Fast Flip was started to help pioneer news content browsing and reading experiences for the web and mobile devices. For the past two years, in collaboration with publishers, the Fast Flip experiment has fueled a new approach to faster, richer content display on the web. This approach will live on in our other display and delivery tools.
Google Maps API for Flash
: The Google Maps API for Flash was launched to provide ActionScript developers a way to integrate Google Maps into their applications. Although we’re deprecating the API, we’ll keep supporting existing Google Maps API Premier customers using the Google Maps API for Flash and we’ll focus our attention on the JavaScript Maps API v3 going forward.
Google Pack
: Due to the rapidly decreasing demand for downloadable software in favor of web apps, we will discontinue Google Pack today. People will still be able to access Google’s and our partners’ software quickly and easily through direct links on the Google Pack website.
Google Web Security
:
Google Web Security
came to Google as part of the Postini acquisition in 2007, and since then we've integrated much of the web security functionality directly into existing Google products, such as safe browsing in Chrome. Although we will discontinue new sales of Google Web Security, we’ll continue to support our existing customers.
Image Labeler
: We began Google Image Labeler as a fun game to help people explore and label the images on the web. Although it will be discontinued, a
wide
variety
of
online games from Google are still available.
Notebook
: Google Notebook enabled people to combine clipped URLs from the web and free-form notes into documents they could share and publish. We’ll be
shutting down Google Notebook in the coming months
, but we’ll automatically export all notebook data to Google Docs.
Sidewiki
: Over the past few years, we’ve seen extraordinary innovation in terms of making the web collaborative. So we’ve decided to discontinue Sidewiki and focus instead on our broader social initiatives. Sidewiki authors will be given more details about this closure in the weeks ahead, and they’ll have a number of months to download their content.
Subscribed Links
: Subscribed Links enabled developers to create specialized search results that were added to the normal Google search results on relevant queries for subscribed users. Although we'll be discontinuing Subscribed Links, developers will be able to access and download their data until September 15, at which point subscribed links will no longer appear in people's search results.
We’ve never been afraid to try big, bold things, and that won’t change. We’ll continue to take risks on interesting new technologies with a lot of potential. But by targeting our resources more effectively, we can focus on building world-changing products with a truly beautiful user experience.
Update
Sept 5
: Clarified language around sales of Google Web Security.
Posted by Alan Eustace, Senior Vice President
Android in spaaaace! (Part 2)
September 1, 2011
Back in December,
Android ventured into near space
, thanks to a weekend of DIY work, a couple of Nexus S phones, some weather balloons and the help of
this little guy
. After this first adventure, we knew it was only a matter of time before Android went further into space.
On the last manned space shuttle,
Atlantis
, NASA sent two Nexus S phones along for the ride as part of the STS-135 mission. The goal is to use Nexus S on the International Space Station to explore how robots can help humans experiment and live in space more efficiently.
NASA is using Nexus S phones to upgrade a trio of volleyball-sized SPHERES (Synchronized Position Hold, Engage, Reorient, Experimental Satellites), originally developed by MIT. The phones help the robotic satellites perform tasks the astronauts used to do, like recording sensor data and capturing video footage. In the future, the phones will control and maneuver the SPHERES using the IOIO board and possibly the
Android Open Accessory Development Kit (ADK)
.
A couple of our engineers built an open source sensor logging app that NASA decided was perfect for running diagnostics with the SPHERES. You can download the same app yourself from
Android Market
. NASA was interested in Android because it’s an open source platform, which makes it easy to customize the software on the phone to meet the specifications required to fly in space and work with the SPHERES. Nexus S was also a good fit because of its various sensors and low-powered, but high-performing, processor.
You can learn more about the project
on NASA’s website
. We loved being a part of the final Space Shuttle mission and working to bring the power of the Android platform to space exploration.
Posted by Thor Lewis, Creative Lead, and Charles Chen, Software Engineer
Happy third birthday, Chrome!
September 1, 2011
It’s that time of the year again for the Chrome team, when we pause on our anniversary to reflect on the amazing life and times of the web. It’s hard to believe that it’s already been
three years since we launched
our open source web browser, Chrome.
In that time, the web community has continued to inspire us, bringing the power of the web into all kinds of apps and experiences, with all modern browsers making great strides in speed, simplicity and security. To pay homage to the goodness of the web, we’ve put together an
interactive infographic
, built in HTML5, which details the evolution of major web technologies and browsers:
(With thanks to our friends at Hyperakt, Vizzuality, mgmt design and GOOD)
In our third year, we’ve also brought Chrome's principles of speed, simplicity and security to a new model of computing: the
Chromebook
. The Chromebook is pure Chrome—a computer built for everything you ever need to do on the web while doing away with all the usual annoyances of an old, slow PC.
Here’s a quick fly-by through the some of the highlights of the past 12 months on the Chrome platform:
Faster and faster
We kick off the
Year of the Rabbit
with a new compilation infrastructure for the V8 JavaScript engine, codenamed “
Crankshaft
,” which improves JavaScript performance by up to 66 percent.
Chrome’s
new settings interface
helps you find the right settings quickly with an integrated search box. It also provides direct links to each settings page, which can be copied and pasted for easy troubleshooting.
The
omnibox
is improved to better suggest partial matches for webpage titles and URLs.
You can optionally enable
Chrome Instant
, which shows relevant content in the browser window as you type, before you press Enter.
Chrome’s built-in
prerendering technology
enables sites to build even faster experiences for their users—such as
Instant Pages
in Google search, which in some cases makes search results appear to
load almost instantly
.
Simpler and more accessible
Chrome supports many popular screen readers such as
JAWS
,
NVDA
and
VoiceOver
to help visually impaired people better experience the web.
Print Preview, a
popular feature request
, uses Chrome’s built-in
PDF viewer
to display the preview, and enables you to save any webpage as a convenient PDF file using the “
Print to PDF
” option.
Chrome’s icon takes on a
simpler look
to embody the Chrome spirit, since Chrome is all about making your web experience quicker, lighter and easier for all.
An even more secure platform
Our integrated and
sandboxed PDF viewer
enables you to view PDF files on the web without installing additional software. Furthermore, we built an additional layer of security around the PDF viewer called a “
sandbox
” to help protect you from security attacks that are targeted at PDF files.
Adobe Flash Player is
sandboxed on Windows
, further protecting you from security attacks and malware targeted at Flash content on the web.
Chrome warns you before downloading
some types of malicious files
with enhanced
Safe Browsing
technology. In order to help
protect privacy
, malicious content is detected without Chrome or Google ever having to know about the URLs that you visit or the files you download.
To provide greater transparency and control over the data that websites store on your computers, Chrome lets you delete
Local Shared Objects
created by Adobe Flash Player using the browser’s
built-in setting dialogs
.
Wowzah, the modern web!
The
Chrome Web Store
is an open marketplace where you can search for and discover web applications, both free and paid, along with ratings and reviews. Developers can add
in-app payments
to their apps for a flat 5 percent transaction fee.
Chrome supports
WebGL
, which brings
hardware-accelerated 3D graphics
to the browser with no additional software needed. For a taste of what WebGL can do, check out “
3 Dreams of Black
,” a 3D music experience for the web browser.
Chrome’s support for the
HTML speech input API
enables developers to give web apps the ability to transcribe your voice into text. Try it out on www.google.com by clicking on the microphone icon in the search box.
Hardware-accelerated
3D CSS
enables snazzier experiences in
webpages
and apps which use 3D effects.
Delivering a new, simpler model for computing
Chrome is
enterprise ready
, with an MSI installer and support for managed group policies. Many organizations such as Vanguard and Procter & Gamble have successfully deployed Chrome to thousands of users in an enterprise setting.
As of this past July, Chromebooks are now
available for purchase
in eight countries—the U.S., U.K., France, Germany, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands and South Korea. And just like Chrome, the Chromebook
always keeps getting better
. When you turn your Chromebook on, it updates itself automatically: you get the latest and greatest version of the operating system without having to think about it.
There’s more to come. Keep an eye on the
Chrome blog
to hear about new features and performance improvements as we continue to ship stable channel updates
every six weeks
. As always, on both Chrome and Chromebooks you’ll be automatically updated to the new versions as soon as they’re released.
Posted by Ben Goodger and Darin Fisher, Software Engineers
Choose the questions for the GOP candidates in the FOX News/Google Debate
September 1, 2011
(Cross-posted on the
YouTube Blog
and the
Public Sector Blog
)
If you’ve been watching the 2012 Republican presidential race from the sidelines, now is your chance to get involved: Google and FOX News will present a GOP primary debate in Orlando, Florida on September 22, and you can drive the conversation by submitting and voting on questions for the candidates. The
Fox News/Google Debate
will combine the questions you submit on YouTube with maps, facts and information to enrich and guide the discussion. You can vote thumbs up or down on the questions using Google Moderator, and many of the top-voted will be put straight to the candidates to answer. The result—an informative dialogue about the future of our country centered on the issues you care most about.
You can submit your questions starting today, in video or in text, at
www.youtube.com/foxnews
. The debate will be live streamed on YouTube as well as broadcast on the FOX News Channel at 9pm ET on Thursday, September 22. Throughout the evening, we’ll use Google’s
public data
and
search trends
on air to give greater context to the questions, and help you make a more informed decision at the polls come November 2012. We hope you’ll join us—
submit your question now
and let your voice be heard.
Posted by Steve Grove, Head of YouTube News and Politics
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