Speech technology at Google: teaching machines to talk and listen

This is the latest post in our series profiling entrepreneurial Googlers working on products across the company and around the world. Here, you’ll get a behind-the-scenes look at how one Googler built an entire R&D team around voice technology that has gone on to power products like YouTube transcriptions and Voice Search. - Ed.

When I first interviewed at Google during the summer of 2004, mobile was just making its way onto the company’s radar. My passion was speech technology, the field in which I’d already worked for 20 years. After 10 years of speech research at SRI, followed by 10 years helping build Nuance Communications, the company I co-founded in 1994, I was ready for a new challenge. I felt that mobile was an area ripe for innovation, with a need for speech technology, and destined to be a key platform for delivery of services.

During my interview, I shared my desire to pursue the mobile space and mentioned that if Google didn’t have any big plans for mobile, then I probably wouldn’t be a good fit for the company. Well, I got the job, and I started soon after, without a team or even a defined role. In classic Google fashion, I was encouraged to explore the company, learn about what various teams were working on and figure out what was needed.

After a few months, I presented an idea to senior management to build a telephone-based spoken interface to local search. Although there was a diversity of opinion at the meeting about what applications made the most sense for Google, all agreed that I should start to build a team focused on speech technology. With help from a couple of Google colleagues who also had speech backgrounds, I began recruiting, and within a few months people were busily building our own speech recognition system.

Six years later, I’m excited by how far we’ve come and, in turn, how our long-term goals have expanded. When I started, I had to sell other teams on the value of speech technology to Google's mission. Now, I’m constantly approached by other teams with ideas and needs for speech. The biggest challenge is scaling our effort to meet the opportunities. We've advanced from GOOG-411, our first speech-driven service, to Voice Search, Voice Input, Voice Actions, a Voice API for Android developers, automatic captioning of YouTube videos, automatic transcription of voicemail for Google Voice and speech-to-speech translation, amongst others. In the past year alone, we’ve ported our technology to more than 20 languages.



Speech technology requires an enormous amount of data to feed our statistical models and lots of computing power to train our systems—and Google is the ideal place to pursue such technical approaches. With large amounts of data, computing power and an infrastructure focused on supporting large-scale services, we’re encouraged to launch quickly and iterate based on real-time feedback.

I’ve been exploring speech technology for nearly three decades, yet I see huge potential for further innovation. We envision a comprehensive interface for voice and text communication that defies all barriers of modality and language and makes information truly universally accessible. And it’s here at Google that I think we have the best chance to make this future a reality.

Update 9:39 PM: Changed title of post to clarify that speech technology is not only used on mobile phones but also for transcription tasks like YouTube captioning and voicemail transcription. -Ed.

Posted by Mike Cohen, Manager, Speech Technology

The Data Viz Challenge: can you make tax data exciting?

(Cross-posted on the Code Blog)

This time of year, everyone in the United States is starting to fill out—with varying levels of enthusiasm—our federal income tax forms. Yet, after we write our checks to the IRS, most of us don’t really know exactly where our money is going.

Fortunately, there’s a new online tool to help us find out. Last year, Andrew Johnson and Louis Garcia, two developers from Minneapolis, Minn., created a website called whatwepayfor.com that uses public data to estimate how our tax money is spent. You enter your income and filing status on the site, and it creates a formatted table of numbers showing your contributions to the federal budget—down to the penny:


We’re impressed by what the website uncovers. In 2010, for example, a married couple making $40,000 a year contributed approximately $14.07 to space operations, $6.83 to aviation security and $0.91 to the Peace Corps…and those are just a few of the hundreds of expenditures revealed on the site. As we spent time exploring all of these details, it got us thinking: how we could make the information even more accessible? So we created a simple interactive data visualization:


Click the image above to try the interactive version—it lets you drag the bubbles around, change the income level and so on. You can now look at the data in a new way, and it’s a little more fun to explore. Of course, there are lots of ways to visualize the data, and we’re very sure there are many talented designers and developers around the country who can do it even better than we have.

To make that happen, we’ve teamed up with Eyebeam, a not-for-profit art and technology center, to host what we’re calling the Data Viz Challenge. Andrew and Louis have built an API to let anyone access the data, so now you can choose how to display it. Could you create a better animated chart? Something in 3D? An interactive website? A physical display somewhere in the real world? We want you to show everyone how data visualization can be a powerful tool for turning information into understanding.

You can enter the challenge at datavizchallenge.org, where you’ll also find more information about challenge and the data. The challenge starts today and ends March 27, 2011, and is open to the U.S. only. The top visualization, as chosen by a jury, will receive a $5,000 award and a shout-out on the site and this blog. We’ll announce the shortlist on the week of April 11, and the winners on April 18, a.k.a. Tax Day.

If you’re a data viz enthusiast, we hope you’ll take a look at the data and build your own creative visualization. But even if you’re not, hopefully the results will help you appreciate what data visualization can do, and its usefulness in turning raw information—like federal income tax numbers—into something you can explore and understand.

Posted by Valdean Klump, Creative Lab

Google Apps highlights – 2/18/11

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.

This Friday update includes improvements to the Gmail mobile web app and Google Docs interfaces, a feature long-sought-after by many Google Voice fans, a powerful account security improvement and stories from several of the companies and government agencies that have recently moved to Google Apps.

Priority Inbox for Gmail mobile web app
Keeping what’s most important front and center is especially helpful on the smaller screen of your mobile device, so we were happy to release Priority Inbox in the Gmail mobile web app. If your phone’s browser supports HTML5, you’ll see the familiar Priority Inbox sections and message importance markers when you visit gmail.com.

Doc list refresh
The documents list in Google Docs got a visual makeover and tune-up on Monday. We added a helpful set of filters to quickly narrow down search results, a right-side preview panel to show details about a selected file and the ability to view uploaded media like photos and videos. What we previously called “Folders” are now called “Collections,” and we’re making the whole interface snappier to save you time.


Port numbers to Google Voice
Last month, we updated Google Voice in response to one of our top user requests: the ability to port existing phone numbers to Google Voice. If you have a beloved phone number that you want to keep as your primary digits, but want Google Voice to ring multiple phones when someone calls, Number Porting might be for you. There’s a $20 charge for Number Porting, and your wireless carrier may charge an early termination fee, so we recommend that you check with your carrier before porting. For more details, check the Google Voice Help Center.



2-Step Verification available to all
Now everyone can help keep their account safer with 2-Step Verification, which we released to Google Apps business customers last year. This advanced security feature works by requiring you to sign in with something you know (your password) plus something you have (a code from your mobile phone). 2-Step Verification helps ensure that the person trying to access your account is the real you.


New setup wizard for Google Apps administrators
Organizations using Google Apps often get up and running in under an hour, but we wanted the setup experience to be even faster and easier. Last week we added a new Google Apps setup wizard to the administrative control panel, which gives guided help for creating user accounts, migrating existing mail to Gmail, routing user email to Gmail and more.


Who’s gone Google?
Recently we’ve seen a surge in new public sector customers—including the Administrative Conference of the United States, the Kansas Department of Wildlife and Parks and the City of Rochester Hills. These organizations are not only saving taxpayer dollars with Google Apps, but also boosting the productivity of their ranks.

More than 50,000 businesses have also started using Google Apps in the last three weeks. Pithy Little Wine Co., DeyFischer Consulting, Manna on Main Street and Hunter Douglas are just a few of the businesses we’ve profiled recently who are are going 100% web.

I hope these product updates and customer stories help you and your organization get even more from Google Apps. For more details and the latest news, check out the Google Apps Blog.

Posted by Jeremy Milo, Google Apps Marketing Manager

Explore our U.S. Presidents on a map

(Cross-posted from the Students Blog and Lat Long Blog)

When I was in elementary school, I got two days off every February; one for George Washington and another for Abraham Lincoln. I remember classrooms were usually wallpapered with a potpourri of decorations left over from Valentine’s Day and token silhouettes of these two Presidents thumb-tacked to the bulletin board. My teachers would talk about the significance of the holiday during class but with lack of visuals to pique my interest, it was always hard to retain (and fully enjoy!) the information. With that in mind, we’re pleased to celebrate the President’s Day holiday in the U.S. by letting you go back in time to learn more about our past presidents in a visually fun and interactive way.

We’ve created a U.S. Presidents Showcase to map the birthplaces of all 44 presidents, and provide details about their presidential terms, using the Google Earth plug-in. You can also see the states that voted during each president’s election by clicking on the tours in the left column of the showcase.


Whether you’re a history buff or simply curious to learn more about U.S. presidents, we hope you enjoy exploring a little further using Google Earth. In addition to the U.S. Presidents map, educators can use some of our other resources in their classroom to explore more aspects of history. Here are a few ideas:

• Explore the White House, Washington Monument, Lincoln Memorial and other historical monuments in 3D and have students explain how architecture is used to honor people, concepts and establishments
• View a 3D model of Valley Forge National Park in Google Earth
• View a copy of the Emancipation Proclamation signed by Abraham Lincoln and map the areas where slavery ended, as well as the areas that were not initially covered by this executive order
• Discuss the famous painting “Washington Crossing the Delaware” by German American artist Emanuel Gottlieb Leutze and use the ruler tool in Google Earth to measure the width of the Delaware River
  

We hope you have fun exploring and learning a little more of the history behind the President’s Day holiday. And when you’re done, go out and enjoy your day off!

Posted by Tina Ornduff, Geo Education Program Manager

YouTube Highlights 2/17/2011

This is the latest in our series of YouTube highlights. Every couple of weeks, we bring you regular updates on new product features, interesting programs to watch and tips you can use to grow your audience on YouTube. Just look for the label “YouTube Highlights” and subscribe to the series. – Ed.

A lot has happened since our last update, including protests in Egypt, a major U.S. sporting event, the launch of the Google Art project and the Grammy Music Awards—all portrayed in different ways by YouTube and our global community.

Footage of protests in the Middle East on YouTube
Thousands of videos of the protests in Egypt earlier this month were uploaded to YouTube, giving people access to raw footage shot by Egyptians on the ground. People around the world could access these videos by visiting CitizenTube, YouTube’s news and politics channel, or watching live coverage on Al Jazeera’s Arabic and English YouTube channels, as well as Fox News' and Arabic broadcaster Al-Arabiya’s YouTube channels. We’ve also been working with news curation group Storyful to curate videos from the protest movements in Bahrain, Iran, Yemen, Algeria and Libya—you can check out highlights on CitizenTube.

This week’s trends on YouTube
Each weekday, YouTube Trends takes a look at the most interesting videos and cultural phenomena on YouTube. Here’s a sampling from the past two weeks:

• The most popular videos in Wisconsin the day after Green Bay won its trophy
• Gospel music: it’s popular in both expected and unexpected places
• Powerful footage from the protests in Egypt
• University of Connecticut quarterback Johnny McEntee's football skills

2011 Nonprofit Video Awards
For the second year in a row, we’re working to help nonprofits succeed through the DoGooder Nonprofit Video Awards, a celebration of the best nonprofit video on the site. Submit your nonprofit’s video at www.youtube.com/nonprofitvideoawards. Prizes include $2,500 grants from the Case Foundation, Flip cams, free admission to the Nonprofit Technology Conference and a spotlight on the YouTube homepage.

Showtime’s “SHORT stories” recruits short filmmakers
Showtime wants to feature cutting-edge web filmmakers through its “SHORT stories” series. If you’re a filmmaker interested in the project, find out more from Showtime's Trevor Noren.

The big game: find out which ads garnered the most views
The halftime ads during the U.S.’s biggest sporting event, the Super Bowl, are notoriously popular—and this past game was no exception. YouTube Trends analyzed which ads were the most-searched commercials in the hours following the big game and compiled the top 10 most-viewed ads the day after.
 We also discovered some fun facts about the big game: Did you know that an estimated 69.6 million pounds of avocados were consumed on that Sunday? Or that this time was the first Super Bowl with no cheerleaders? Check out YouTube AdBlitz to watch any ads you may have missed.

Events worth watching
In case you missed them live, you can still catch up on some of the big happenings of the past few weeks on YouTube:

• The Grammys: Catch behind-the-scenes footage from the Sunday, February 13 awards ceremony on YouTube or visit youtube.com/thegrammys
• Fashion Week: During Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week (February 10-17), we've been bringing viewers the hottest designers’ shows, from Carolina Herrera to Herve Leger to Alice & Olivia; visit www.youtube.com/liverunway for more
• Birthday tribute for the “The Great Communicator”: Sunday, February 6 would have been the 100th birthday of Ronald Reagan, the 40th President of the United States. Find many of his iconic speeches, such as this message to Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, as well as tributes and historical videos on YouTube

We’ll update you again in a few weeks. In the meantime, visit the YouTube Blog for more on ongoing programs such as On the Rise and YouTube Trends.

Posted by Serena Satyasai, Marketing Manager, The YouTube Team

Designing award-winning video games with SketchUp

Uncharted 2: Among Thieves was the biggest video game of 2009. It sold more than 3.5 million copies worldwide, was identified by Metacritic as the most critically acclaimed game of the year, racked up more than 50 Game of the Year awards and set a new bar for artistry and storytelling in a video game. I spent more Saturday nights than I care to admit playing this game, so I was pretty excited when I found out that Robh Ruppel, Art Director at Naughty Dog Studios, used Google SketchUp to help design the game’s look and feel.

We sat down with Robh to hear how he used SketchUp to visualize Uncharted 2’s environments.



To hear more of our conversation with Robh and see some of his work, check out the Google SketchUp blog.

Posted by Gopal Shah, SketchUp Marketing team

An update to Google Social Search

(Cross-posted on the Social Web Blog)

Today we’re doing a little bit more to bring you all the goodness of Google, plus the opinions of the people you care about. As always, we want to help you find the most relevant answers among the billions of interconnected pages on the web. But relevance isn’t just about pages—it’s also about relationships. That’s why we introduced Google Social Search in 2009, and why we’ve made a number of improvements since then. Today we’re taking another step forward—enabling you to get even more information from the people that matter to you, whether they’re publishing on YouTube, Flickr or their own blog or website.

First, social search results will now be mixed throughout your results based on their relevance (in the past they only appeared at the bottom). This means you’ll start seeing more from people like co-workers and friends, with annotations below the results they’ve shared or created. So if you’re thinking about climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro and your colleague Matt has written a blog post about his own experience, then we’ll bump up that post with a note and a picture:

Social search results can rank anywhere on the page, and you’ll see who shared the result in the annotation underneath

Second, we’ve made Social Search more comprehensive by adding notes for links people have shared on Twitter and other sites. In the past, we’d show you results people created and linked through their Google profiles. Now, if someone you’re connected to has publicly shared a link, we may show that link in your results with a clear annotation (which is visible only to you, and only when you’re signed in). For example, if you’re looking for a video of President Obama on “The Daily Show” and your friend Nundu tweeted the video, that result might show up higher in your results and you’ll see a note with a picture of Nundu:

Now Social Search includes links people share on Twitter and other services

Third, we’ve given you more control over how you connect accounts, and made connecting accounts more convenient. You can still connect accounts publicly on your Google profile, but now we’ve added a new option to connect accounts privately in your Google Account. (After all, you may not want everyone to know you’re @spongebobsuperfan on Twitter.) In addition, if our algorithms find a public account that might be yours (for example, because the usernames are the same), we may invite you to connect your accounts right on the search results page and in your Google Account settings:

The new setting enables you to choose whether or not to show your connected accounts publicly on your Google profile

For an overview of Google Social Search and our new features, check out the explanatory video:



As always, you’ll only get social search results when you choose to log in to your Google Account. We’re starting to roll out the updates today on Google.com in English only and you’ll see them appear in the coming week. With these changes, we want to help you find the most relevant information possible, personalized to your interests and the people you care about. To learn more, check out our help center.

Posted by Mike Cassidy, Product Management Director, and Matthew Kulick, Product Manager

Sixteen demos enter. One demo triumphs. Welcome to the Demo Slampionship.

Last October, we introduced Demo Slam based on one simple idea: nobody knows Google tech better than our users. So we asked all of you to submit tech demo videos that showcase our technology in fun ways.

Four months and many tech demos later, Demo Slam has reached people all over the world. Thanks to students, musicians, filmmakers, scientists, athletes, animators and even a toddler, demoslam.com has become a hub of creativity and technology. We’ve seen voice searches 20 feet off the ground, a living replica of Mt. Rushmore and a transcontinental Street View road race.

It’s been tons of fun, but now it’s time for Demo Slam to get serious: ladies and gentlemen, the first-ever Demo Slampionship begins today. Sixteen of Demo Slam’s finest slams will go head to head in a single elimination tournament. Each round, your votes decide who advances to final Slampionship. Voting for the first round of 16 begins today, followed by the quarter finals, semi finals and the Final Slampionship. Although there can be only one Slampion, every demo will do its part to help millions understand technology a little better.

Go to demoslam.com to check out the competition and start voting on the first round. Let the Slampionship begin!

Posted by Michaela Prescott, Group Product Marketing Manager

Visualize your own data in the Google Public Data Explorer

(Cross-posted on the Google Code Blog)

Over the past two years, we’ve made public data easier to find, explore and understand in several ways, providing unemployment figures, population statistics and world development indicators in search results, and introducing the Public Data Explorer tool. Together with our data provider partners, we’ve curated 27 datasets including more than 300 data metrics. You can now use the Public Data Explorer to visualize everything from labor productivity (OECD) to Internet speed (Ookla) to gender balance in parliaments (UNECE) to government debt levels (IMF) to population density by municipality (Statistics Catalonia), with more data being added every week.

Today, we’re opening the Public Data Explorer to your data. We’re making a new data format, the Dataset Publishing Language (DSPL), openly available, and providing an interface for anyone to upload their datasets. DSPL is an XML-based format designed from the ground up to support rich, interactive visualizations like those in the Public Data Explorer. The DSPL language and upload interface are available in Google Labs.

To upload a dataset, click on the “My Datasets” link on the left-hand side of the Public Data Explorer. Once imported, a dataset can be visualized, embedded in external websites, shared with others and published. If you’re an official provider, you can request that your datasets appear in the Public Data Explorer directory; please contact us to discuss this process.


With this new capability, we hope more datasets can come to life through Public Data Explorer visualisations and enable people to better understand the world around them and make more informed, data-driven decisions. Stay tuned for more datasets, visualization features and DSPL extensions in the future.

Posted by Omar Benjelloun, Technical Lead, Google Public Data Team

A simple way for publishers to manage access to digital content

(Cross-posted on the Google News Blog)

At Humboldt University in Berlin today, Eric Schmidt announced Google One Pass, a service that lets publishers set their own prices and terms for their digital content. With Google One Pass, publishers can maintain direct relationships with their customers and give readers access to digital content across websites and mobile apps.

Readers who purchase from a One Pass publisher can access their content on tablets, smartphones and websites using a single sign-on with an email and password. Importantly, the service helps publishers authenticate existing subscribers so that readers don’t have to re-subscribe in order to access their content on new devices.

With Google One Pass, publishers can customize how and when they charge for content while experimenting with different models to see what works best for them—offering subscriptions, metered access, "freemium" content or even single articles for sale from their websites or mobile apps. The service also lets publishers give existing print subscribers free (or discounted) access to digital content. We take care of the rest, including payments technology handled via Google Checkout.

Our goal is to provide an open and flexible platform that furthers our commitment to support publishers, journalism and access to quality content. Like First Click Free, Fast Flip and Living Stories, this is another initiative developed to enable publishers to promote and distribute digital content.

German publishers Axel Springer AG, Focus Online (Tomorrow Focus) and Stern.de joined Eric at Humboldt University today as some of our first Google One Pass partners. Other publishers already signed up include Media General, NouvelObs, Bonnier’s Popular Science, Prisa and Rust Communications.

Google One Pass is currently available for publishers in Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, the U.K. and the U.S. If you’re a publisher in one of these countries and want to learn more, please reach out to the Google One Pass team or submit your information on our website. For interested publishers in other countries, we’d love to hear from you too as we plan to expand to other countries in the coming months.

Posted by Lee Shirani, director, business product management, Google Commerce

Search trends: a clue to 2011 Oscar winners?

Each year, as the Academy Awards bubble to the top of our collective consciousness, we see a major spike in search traffic related to the event. This year, on the day the nominees were announced, four of the top 10 trending search terms in the U.S. were Oscar-related.

After last year’s awards ceremony, we provided an in-depth summary of search trends that played out during the broadcast. But could search trends have predicted the winners? To make it easy to explore how the actors, directors and cinematographers are trending in search—and maybe see if that data correlates with the eventual winners—you can explore search data across all award categories on our new Oscar Search Trends website.

John Batelle once described search trends as “a massive database of desires, needs, wants and likes.” Looking at Insights for Search data, we were intrigued to find that this “database of intentions” shows consistent search patterns among Best Picture winners for the last three years. Each year, the winning film has shown an upward trend in search volume for at least four weeks, as well as highest regional interest from New York (The Hurt Locker, Slumdog Millionaire and No Country for Old Men).


Will that pattern repeat this year? If you apply the same test, this year’s most likely candidates for best picture—by search pattern—are The Social Network (trending upward for five weeks) followed by Black Swan and The King’s Speech (each trending upward for four weeks). The Fighter, another 2011 Best Picture nominee, saw an upward trend in search volume for five weeks after its release, but highest regional interest was from Massachusetts instead of New York; no film with highest regional interest in Massachusetts has won best picture since The Departed in 2007. Perhaps Boston will take it back in 2011?

We can’t say for sure what will happen this year, since searches can only reflect what people are interested in, but it’s fun to look for patterns that persist year after year. So before you make any Academy Awards-related bets with your friends this year, be sure to explore the Oscar Search Trends. Choose any award category to see how the nominees were searched over time.

Posted by Niv Efron, Insights for Search team, Google Israel R&D Center

Making sense of science: introducing the Google Science Communication Fellows

(Cross-posted on the Google.org Blog)

In an effort to foster a more open, transparent and accessible scientific dialogue, we’ve started a new effort aimed at inspiring pioneering use of technology, new media and computational thinking in the communication of science to diverse audiences. Initially, we’ll focus on communicating the science on climate change.

We’re kicking off this effort by naming 21 Google Science Communication Fellows. These fellows were elected from a pool of applicants of early to mid-career Ph.D. scientists nominated by leaders in climate change research and science-based institutions across the U.S. It was hard to choose just 21 fellows from such an impressive pool of scientists; ultimately, we chose scientists who had the strongest potential to become excellent communicators. That meant previous training in science communication; research in topics related to understanding or managing climate change; and experience experimenting with innovative approaches or technology tools for science communication. This year’s fellows are an impressive bunch:

• Brendan Bohannan, Associate Professor of Environmental Studies and Biology, University of Oregon
• Edward Brook, Professor, Department of Geosciences, Oregon State University
• Julia Cole, Professor, Department of Geosciences, University of Arizona
• Eugene Cordero, Associate Professor, Meteorology and Climate Science, San Jose University
• Frank Davis, Professor, Landscape Ecology & Conservation Planning, University of California-Santa Barbara
• Andrew Dessler, Professor, Atmospheric Sciences, Texas A&M University
• Noah Diffenbaugh, Assistant Professor, Environmental Earth System Science, Stanford University
• Simon Donner, Assistant Professor, University of British Columbia
• Nicole Heller, Research Scientist, Climate Central
• Brian Helmuth, Professor, Biological Sciences, University South Carolina
• Paul Higgins, Associate Director, Policy Program, American Meteorological Society
• Jonathan Koomey, Consulting Professor, Civil and Environmental Engineering, Stanford University
• David Lea, Professor, Earth Science, University of California-Santa Barbara
• Kelly Levin, Senior Research Associate, World Resources Institute
• David Lobell, Assistant Professor, Environmental Earth System Science, Stanford University
• Edwin Maurer, Associate Professor, Civil Engineering, Santa Clara University
• Susanne Moser, Research Associate, Institute of Marine Sciences, University of California-Santa Cruz
• Matthew Nisbet, Associate Professor, School of Communication, American University
• Rebecca Shaw, Director of Conservation, The Nature Conservancy, CA Chapter
• Whendee Silver, Professor, Ecosystem Ecology and Biogeochemistry, University of California-Berkeley
• Alan Townsend, Professor, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Colorado

At our Mountain View, Calif. headquarters in June, the fellows will participate in a workshop, which will integrate hands-on training and facilitated brainstorming on topics of technology and science communication. Following the workshop, fellows will be given the opportunity to apply for grants to put their ideas into practice. Those with the most impactful projects will be given the opportunity to join a Lindblad Expeditions & National Geographic trip to the Arctic, the Galapagos or Antarctica as a science communicator.

Congratulations to all of the fellows! And we’ll keep you posted on more ideas and tools emerging for science communication.

Posted by Dr. Amy Luers, Google.org and Tina Ornduff, Google Education

New Chrome extension: block sites from Google’s web search results

(Cross-posted on the Google Chrome Blog)

We’ve been exploring different algorithms to detect content farms, which are sites with shallow or low-quality content. One of the signals we're exploring is explicit feedback from users. To that end, today we’re launching an early, experimental Chrome extension so people can block sites from their web search results. If installed, the extension also sends blocked site information to Google, and we will study the resulting feedback and explore using it as a potential ranking signal for our search results.

You can download the extension and start blocking sites now. It looks like this:

When you block a site with the extension, you won’t see results from that domain again in your Google search results. You can always revoke a blocked site at the bottom of the search results, so it's easy to undo blocks:

You can also edit your list of blocked sites by clicking on the extension's icon in the top right of the Chrome window.


This is an early test, but the extension is available in English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish and Turkish. We hope this extension improves your search experience, and thanks in advance for participating in this experiment. If you’re a tech-savvy Chrome user, please download and try the Personal Blocklist extension today.

Posted by Matt Cutts, Principal Engineer

Pin your love on the map

(Cross-posted from the Lat Long Blog)

This Valentine’s Day, tell your friends, family or significant other that you love them with a fun message from Google Maps.

Location can be a powerful trigger of memories—from the Italian place in San Francisco where you went on your first date to the cabin you rented at Lake Tahoe with your roommates. For that reason, we thought it would be great to create a Valentine’s Day card that’s tied to a specific location. As long as there’s a place that means something special to you and the ones you love, mapping your valentine is a great way to make Valentine’s Day a little more special.


One of my favorite memories is from a family trip we took to Eilat in Israel (check out my awesome fashion sense, I’m on the far left...), so I sent my parents this card:


I hope you'll take a moment to remind the people you love of the places you've shared with them. Visit www.mapyourvalentine.com to get started.

Happy Valentine's Day from Google!

Posted with love by Aaron Weissman, Google Maps & Earth Team

This week in search 2/11/11

This is part of a regular series of posts on search experience updates that runs on Fridays. Look for the label "This week in search" and subscribe to the series. - Ed.

With features like Instant, the dynamic left-hand panel of tools, voice search and Google Goggles, search is becoming more interactive all the time. You don’t just type and query and hit enter: you can speak your search query, and whether typing or speaking, you can search in a kind of conversation, with the results and search tools updating dynamically based on just a few characters. This week’s changes all continue to make Google more interactive and responsive to your intentions, whether you’re looking for a vector graphic file for a presentation, getting Google Instant results or looking for a fun distraction in the middle of the workday.

Instant satellite and terrain maps on Google results
We love the satellite and terrain views you can get in Google Earth and Maps, but shouldn’t you be able to get those views right away on the results page without having to click through to Maps and then click the “satellite” or “terrain” option? Well now, when you’re looking for these specialized map views, you’ll get them instantly on your main results page. For example, if you search for [honolulu satellite map], you’ll see the city’s lush green interior and deep blue ocean right in your search results. Click the map to jump directly to a larger view.


Example searches: [satellite map of moscow], [yosemite terrain map]

New ways to find Scalable Vector Graphic (SVG) files
Scalable Vector Graphics (SVGs) are files that describe how to draw the basic elements needed to create an image: elements like lines, circles, polygons and more complex shapes. Unlike the images typically returned by most search engines (for example, JPG, GIF and PNG), SVGs can be stretched to any size without the quality of the image suffering. This makes them ideally suited for things like clip art, maps, logos, flags and scientific diagrams. In December, we announced we were starting to return SVGs in our results; more recently, we made it possible to refine your search to exclusively return SVGs. Click “Images” in the left-hand panel, then "Advanced Search” and then select the SVG filetype. If you want to impress your friends, you can also add “filetype:svg” to any normal search, such as [graph theory filetype:svg]:


Example searches: [world map filetype:svg], [flag filetype:svg]

Chrome Instant ready for prime time
If you haven’t yet tried Instant on Chrome, now is a great time to check it out. Instant on Chrome arrived in the stable build last Thursday, which means it’s ready for prime time. Chrome brings the Instant experience to a whole new level—not just search results, but also webpages begin loading as soon as you start typing. To try it out, download the latest release and enable Instant in the “Basics” tab of Chrome’s options.


Celebrating Jules Verne’s birthday by diving into the depths
We’ve been having fun with some unique and interactive doodles lately, and this week was no exception. On Monday visitors to Google were invited to navigate the Nautilus and dive down into the depths. Pull the lever or tilt your computer (side note: who knew my laptop had an accelerometer?) and the Nautilus will follow. If you missed the doodle, you can still play with the underlying graphic in full view and HD!


It turns out you can do a lot of wild things on Google...you can talk to it and, sometimes, you can play games right on our homepage—but at the end of the day, the most important thing you can do is find the best answer to your question.

Posted by Amit Singhal, Google Fellow

More “I do”s, less “to-do”s: wedding planning simplified

(Cross-posted on the Google Docs Blog and the Google Photos Blog)

For many, your wedding day is one of the biggest, most momentous days of your life. The perfect dress, the right tuxedo, the proper shade of blue, the three-tier cake with chocolate fondant, and all of your closest family and friends—these are just a few of the many things you might think about for your special day. Although there’s much to consider and a lot of work to do, the payoff is great: it’s one of the happiest days of your life.

To help you plan this important day we’ve created wedding-specific templates in Google Sites, Google Docs and Picnik, and gathered tips and tricks for using these and other Google products at google.com/weddings. From wedding websites to save-the-date cards, these tools simplify wedding planning, letting you focus your time on the fun things—like tasting cakes!

We teamed up with renowned wedding planner Michelle Rago, who provided her insight and creativity to guide the designs you’ll find on this new site. Michelle also shared her experience to provide tips and advice to keep your guests comfortable and you sane.

We’re also hosting a wedding sweepstakes, so if you’re getting married in the next year you can enter for a chance to win $25,000 towards your dream wedding (see Official Rules). Plus, Michelle Rago and her team will advise the winning couple on location, flowers, food and other design elements to create a day that is uniquely their own.

Visit google.com/weddings to start planning, or share the site with your favorite betrothed couple and help them on their way to wedded bliss.

Posted by Lisa Conquergood, Senior Product Marketing Manager

Advanced sign-in security for your Google account

(Cross-posted on the Gmail Blog)

Has anyone you know ever lost control of an email account and inadvertently sent spam—or worse—to their friends and family? There are plenty of examples (like the classic "Mugged in London" scam) that demonstrate why it's important to take steps to help secure your activities online. Your Gmail account, your photos, your private documents—if you reuse the same password on multiple sites and one of those sites gets hacked, or your password is conned out of you directly through a phishing scam, it can be used to access some of your most closely-held information.

Most of us are used to entrusting our information to a password, but we know that some of you are looking for something stronger. As we announced to our Google Apps customers a few months ago, we've developed an advanced opt-in security feature called 2-step verification that makes your Google Account significantly more secure by helping to verify that you're the real owner of your account. Now it's time to offer the same advanced protection to all of our users.

2-step verification requires two independent factors for authentication, much like you might see on your banking website: your password, plus a code obtained using your phone. Over the next few days, you'll see a new link on your Account Settings page that looks like this:

Take your time to carefully set up 2-step verification—we expect it may take up to 15 minutes to enroll. A user-friendly set-up wizard will guide you through the process, including setting up a backup phone and creating backup codes in case you lose access to your primary phone. Once you enable 2-step verification, you'll see an extra page that prompts you for a code when you sign in to your account. After entering your password, Google will call you with the code, send you an SMS message or give you the choice to generate the code for yourself using a mobile application on your Android, BlackBerry or iPhone device. The choice is up to you. When you enter this code after correctly submitting your password we'll have a pretty good idea that the person signing in is actually you.

It's an extra step, but it's one that significantly improves the security of your Google Account because it requires the powerful combination of both something you know—your username and password—and something that only you should have—your phone. A hacker would need access to both of these factors to gain access to your account. If you like, you can always choose a "Remember verification for this computer for 30 days" option, and you won't need to re-enter a code for another 30 days. You can also set up one-time application-specific passwords to sign in to your account from non-browser based applications that are designed to only ask for a password, and cannot prompt for the code.

To learn more about 2-step verification and get started, visit our Help Center. And for more about staying safe online, see our ongoing security blog series or visit http://www.staysafeonline.org/. Be safe!

Posted by Nishit Shah, Product Manager, Google Security

Boutiques.com reveals the fashion trends on everyone’s mind

Since we introduced Boutiques.com last November, we’ve been busy developing new features that we’re proud to unveil as New York Fashion Week hits the runways.

More of the boutiques you love
We’re welcoming hundreds of thousands of stunning new boutiques, including those from designers Helmut Lang, Michael Kors, Billy Reid and Thakoon.

Trend data to excite designers and fashion enthusiasts alike
Over the past few months, we’ve watched usage of Boutiques soar. Shoppers aren’t just creating their own customized boutiques, they’re enthusiastically taking our Stylyzer Quiz and sharing what they “love” and “hate” about products while browsing. As a result, we’ve gained a unique, aggregate view into the latest fashion trends—a reflection of what shoppers think and feel about the colors, silhouettes, patterns and prices of individual products from across the web.

So today we’re unveiling Designer Analytics, a tool that enables our design partners to benefit from this collective knowledge—giving them insight into how their products are searched, shopped and loved. With easy-to-understand data visualizations, Designer Analytics shows what colors, shapes and patterns are most loved and hated broadly (in categories such as shoes, dresses and handbags) and even down to how specific items are performing. Designers can also see how their stats compare to brands like them. Designer Analytics is available when logged in, and looks like this:


We’re also launching a public version called Trend Analytics that gives curious fashionistas a view into the latest, site-wide fashion trends. Using aggregate data from both Boutiques.com and Google Search, it shows the hottest colors of the season, the most-loved products and the must-have trends.



New boutique features to help you express your style
We’re adding some enhanced features for boutiques, including a photo gallery and video upload (celebrity, designers, blogger and featured boutiques only) to give more opportunities for people to express who they are and share their unique point of view.


A Fashion Week giveaway game to put your fashion acumen to the test
We’re also kicking off a fashion trivia giveaway game, called Sartorial Pursuit, which you can play anywhere via SMS/Twitter. Each hour during fashion week, you’ll find a new multiple-choice trivia question that ties into our trend analytics and features designers and products on the site. Follow the game on our Twitter account @BoutiquesStyle to answer quiz questions from home for a chance to win stylish Fashion Week prizes.

Posted by Abigail Holtz, Product Manager

Dialed up: the rapid launch and growth of Click-to-Call

This post is the first in our series profiling entrepreneurial Googlers working on products across the company and around the world. Here, you’ll get an in-depth look at how one of our most successful mobile advertising features was launched by one and a half engineers in a matter of months. -Ed.

I’ll always remember my first cell phone—a big, black brick that was really only good for making calls. While technology certainly has advanced since then, I still appreciate the speed of connecting to people and businesses instantly over the phone, something that I found harder and harder to do when I searched, for example, for the number of a restaurant to make a reservation.

So in June of 2009, a few engineers and I pooled our 20% time and worked to develop a prototype of what would eventually become Click-to-Call for smartphones, an ad unit that makes it easier for people to connect to a business by phone, rather than through a website.


Building the feature was the easy part; essentially, we developed an ad extension that allows advertisers to include a phone or location in their campaigns. However, it was launching it to advertisers that posed the biggest challenge.

With new products like Click-to-Call, we often choose to launch in beta, and incrementally roll out the features to a small subset of users, usually beginning at a 1% test and increasing from there. With Click-to-Call, we’d developed a mobile feature that we wanted to launch as soon as possible, but since mobile advertising was much smaller at that point—then with only about one-sixth as many search queries we get today—we calculated that it would take nearly three years to roll out to 10% and around 10 years to actually launch it. At that rate, the feature would likely become antiquated long before it ever officially launched.

So I decided not to follow the usual process and took a risk, choosing to launch to 50% of Google’s mobile advertisers within the first week. In my view, there was simply no other way to collect enough feedback in a short period of time so that we could quickly iterate based on feedback. Thousands of advertisers—an unprecedented amount for a brand-new feature—were on board to try it out, and with a few engineers and some pretty massive spreadsheets, we started to see real results. Within a month, we had the magical ingredient—momentum—and from there we were collecting enough feedback to be on track to bring the feature to all advertisers in a matter of months.


This is one of the reasons I work at Google. Google gives me freedom to experiment, ownership of my ideas, and amazing resources and support. We built Click-to-Call in June 2009, began testing it in July, and had it up and running for all advertisers in January 2010. One year later, Click-to-Call ads on both search and the Google Display Network are generating millions of calls every month on mobile phones and driving strong performance for advertisers.

If you’re interested in exploring some of the most significant trends in mobile, you can watch our Think Mobile livestream this Thursday, February 10 at 1:05pm EST, where we’ll discuss why it’s “not too late for businesses to still be early” in this space.

Posted by Surojit Chatterjee, Senior Product Manager, Google Mobile Ads team

Introducing the Google Translate app for iPhone

(Cross-posted from the Google Mobile Blog)

Back in August 2008, we launched a Google Translate HTML5 web app for iPhone users. Today, the official Google Translate for iPhone app is available for download from the App Store. The new app has all of the features of the web app, plus some significant new additions designed to improve your overall translation experience.

Speak to translate
The new app accepts voice input for 15 languages, and—just like the web app—you can translate a word or phrase into one of more than 50 languages. For voice input, just press the microphone icon next to the text box and say what you want to translate.

Listen to your translations
You can also listen to your translations spoken out loud in one of 23 different languages. This feature uses the same new speech synthesizer voices as the desktop version of Google Translate we introduced last month.

Full-screen mode
Another feature that might come in handy is the ability to easily enlarge the translated text to full-screen size. This way, it’s much easier to read the text on the screen, or show the translation to the person you are communicating with. Just tap on the zoom icon to quickly zoom in.

And the app also includes all of the major features of the web app, including the ability to view dictionary results for single words, access your starred translations and translation history even when offline, and support romanized text like Pinyin and Romaji.

You can download Google Translate now from the App Store globally. The app is available in all iOS supported languages, but you’ll need an iPhone or iPod touch iOS version 3 or later.

Posted by Wenzhang Zhu, Software Engineer

Happy birthday from 20,000 leagues under the sea

It wasn’t very difficult for something to spark my imagination when I was a child—whether it was a pile of leaves or a couch of stackable cushions, just about anything could jump-start my creativity. My first encounter with Jules Verne’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, however, sent my imagination into hyper drive.

I first found the novel while browsing through a random aisle in my local library. The cover was dark, murky and a little worn—but it was the most spectacular thing I’d ever seen. A pair of old-fashioned divers drag their feet over the ocean floor, watching a school of fish drift by. They don’t seem to notice the twisting silhouette of a monster inching toward them.

The cover alone pulled me in, but I didn’t want to spoil all of the possible story lines by actually reading the book. Looking back, I realize that what fascinated me most was the unknown: a creative spark and the imaginative exploration that followed. Since then, I’ve become more familiar with his work and still believe that exploration is the essence of Verne’s novels. His stories pull the readers into a world filled with infinite potential—be it in the clouds, on land or under the sea.

Today’s doodle, celebrating Verne’s 183rd birthday, tries to capture that sense of adventure and exploration. Using CSS3 (and with help from our resident tech wizards Marcin Wichary and Kris Hom), the doodle enables anyone to navigate the Nautilus (nearly) 20,000 leagues with the simple pull of a lever. And for those using devices with built-in accelerometers and the latest versions of Google Chrome or Firefox, it’s even simpler—just tilt your device in the direction you want to explore and the Nautilus will follow.

So voyage below (and above) the waves to see what you can discover... just make sure to keep an eye out for the giant squid.

Update Feb 9, 8:44 AM: You can now explore the ocean from our Jules Verne doodle in full view and HD.

Posted by Jennifer Hom, Google Doodler

Register for Google I/O 2011

We’ve been counting down the days until Google I/O 2011 and hope that you have been, too. With 91 days, 22 hours and 45 minutes to go, we’re excited to announce that registration is now open at www.google.com/io. Our largest annual developer conference will take place on May 10-11, 2011 at the Moscone Center in San Francisco, Calif.

The focus of I/O 2011 will be all about the cloud, and feature the latest Google products and technologies including Android, Google Chrome, App Engine, Google Web Toolkit and Google APIs. There will be many opportunities to meet members of Google’s engineering teams and take deep dives into the technologies with more than 100 technical sessions, roundtables and more. The Developer Sandbox, which we introduced at I/O 2009, will be back, featuring developers from more than 100 companies to demo their apps, share their experiences and exchange ideas.

If you liked our countdown, stay tuned for more surprises. We’ll keep you posted on the latest developments for Google I/O 2011 at the website, on Twitter (@Googleio) and Google Buzz. Get your tickets early—last year we sold out in record time!

Registration opens with an Early Bird rate of $450, which applies through April 16 ($550 after April 16). Faculty and students can register at the discounted Academia rate of $150, which will be allocated on a first-come, first-served basis.

Learn more and register today at www.google.com/io.

We look forward to seeing you in San Francisco!

Update Feb 22: The countdown was created and animated using JavaScript and HTML.

Posted by Vic Gundotra, VP Engineering