A year of Google blogging

Posted by Karen Wickre, Google Blog team

This is the 201st post to be published on the Google Blog in 2005. In closing out the first full year of our company-wide effort to share news and views, we thought you might be interested in a few factoids. Since we've had Google Analytics running on this blog since June, some of these numbers reflect only half a year. In that time, 4.3 million unique visitors have generated 8.7 million pageviews. Readers have come from all over the world, not just English-speaking countries: 53,001 visitors from Turkey have stopped by, for example; so have 155,691 from France, 29,614 from Thailand and 8,233 from Peru.

The most popular posts? Here are a few that have yielded scores of backlinks:

- Our explanation of "Googlebombing"
- A celebration of email and Gmail
- Google Earth's partnership with National Geographic about Africa

Several on Google Book Search (formerly known as Google Print), including:
- Preserving public domain books
- Our statement on the Authors' Guild suit
- and Eric Schmidt's op-ed about Book Search.

During the year, we've published 38 how-to tips, announced 77 new products and services, and addressed policy questions and legal matters 17 times. We've featured 11 guest bloggers. Forty posts have illuminated something about day to day life at Google; 19 have offered some international perspective.

In 2006, we'll keep up the Google Blog with more posts, more bloggers, and even more topics. Meanwhile, we really appreciate your interest and feedback, now visible through "Links to this post." We know some of you would like to offer comments directly, and we would like that too, when we can add resources to the blog crew. Meanwhile, our best to you and yours for the New Year.

Thailand's Sexiest: Actress Patcharapa Chaichua

Patcharapa 'Aum' Chaichua was recently voted Thailand's sexiest woman. Born on 5 December 1978, Aum is one of the top hotties on Thai TV in 2005. She can be found on almost every TV channel in Thailand with appearances in TV soaps.

This 168cm hottie is still single and rumours are that she is making it with every leading man. Some Thais feel she's sleazy for both her behavior and the amount of skin she likes to show.

She has also made the cover of popular fashion and gossip mags in Thailand.

Lin Zhi Ling is the Beautiful Newsmaker of the year

Taiwan's Top Model Lin Zhi Ling is the Beautiful Newsmaker of 2005! Having said that, the beautiful/elegant Chilling herself had an eventful year. She had her photos made into stamps in Taiwan, fell off a horse while shooting a commercial in China, after recovering... took up singing lessons to break into the music industry, hosted an award show, and at the same time endured rumours and speculations about breast implants.

What a year!

Hot Thai Actress/Model Methinee Kingpayome

Methinee Kingpayome is a popular Thai top model for many years. She was born on 11 June, 1972 and stands at 178cm. She's a familiar face in most of Bangkok's major events, magazine covers, TV and print ads as well for anything fashion related.

I'm feeling silly

Posted by Clay Bavor, Associate Product Manager

Not long ago, I walked by the desk of software engineer JJ Furman, and saw that he had made an interesting addition to his desk: a large blob of Silly Putty, about the size of a grapefruit. Intrigued, I asked how he'd gotten so much of the stuff. The answer? A bulk order directly from the manufacturer! Of course.

I knew then that I wanted some, and it dawned on me that I probably wasn't the only one. So I set out to place a really, really big bulk order. An email went out to cohorts. Their orders came in. Three weeks later, I had an eighth of a ton of Silly Putty delivered to my desk.


Naturally, we were all curious to see what 250 pounds of Silly Putty would look like, so before distributing the stuff, we put it all in a single pile to see. Huge mistake.

The problem was that once together, Silly Putty doesn't like to come apart, and none of us had any idea of how to deal with this effect. We tried everything: very strong people (didn't work), scissors (stabbing worked, slicing didn't), 28-gauge steel wire (broke), 22-gauge steel wire (broke), 16-gauge steel wire (too thick), and twisting and breaking (worked well for "smaller" pieces -- under five pounds, that is.)


Two hours later, with the help of more than a dozen enthusiastic Googlers, everyone was finally able to walk away with a giant piece of Silly Putty.

And then what? Some people are giving it for holiday gifts. Others are using it to exercise their arms, play basketball (rebounds are tough), and of course, imprint entire newspaper pages.
Any regrets? Absolutely not.

Pick of the Week #1

Unsure of her name, but she looks kinda familiar...

Korean Actress Park Han Byul

Park Han Byul is a Korean actress/model. She was born on 17 November, 1984 and this 168cm lass is famous for her advertisements where her stunning looks captivated the audience both in Korea and the Asian region. Amongst the Korean drama and movies credited to her were Han River Ballad (2004), My Fair Lady (2003) and Wishing Stairs (2003)

Merry Christmas!

This just in...

Posted by PenguinOpus

The Google Earth team has received a pretty interesting business development inquiry that we thought we'd share with you:

To: "Google Support"
From: claus@gmail.com
Subject: Naughty or Nice Layer

I love Google Earth and have been planning a big trip with it. Now I'm wondering if you've ever thought about licensing data layers for "nice" and "naughty." If interested, I've got a really good list -- I've checked it twice. Rooftop accurate data!

Let me know,
S. Claus

While we didn't work a deal for Naughty or Nice data layers, we did negotiate the rights to track this user on his big trip. If you've already got Google Earth, you can too.

If you don't have it, get your own Google Earth.

Import Model Leah Dizon

Leah Dizon was born in Las Vegas on September 24, 1986. The 5.5 ft lass is the daughter of a casino dealer and-through many years in high school theater-is a self-admitted nerd because she loves the acting community. Armed with the smarts and confidence of a girl years beyond her 18, this sexy Filipina/ Chinese/ Caucasian beauty aims to get her degree in the arts and eventually pursue the Hollywood dream.

She'll be Los Angeles-bound before the end of the year. She's a virgin to the import scene. Her baby steps include only a handful of Web sites and one other magazine cover. Her newness makes it difficult to find any real information on Google; it only teases with random candid photos.

Leah was discovered when getting her pictures taken by a photographer in the Bay Area while visiting a family friend. She started getting offers after she went to a show with the photographer and really followed up on them. She started modeling recently and was contacted by a photographer for a magazine.

About the AOL announcement

Posted by Marissa Mayer, VP of Search Products & User Experience

The recent announcement of the AOL partnership has been the source of a lot of rumors and misconceptions. We'd like to clear some of those up.

- Biased results? No way. Providing great search is the core of what we do. Business partnerships will never compromise the integrity or objectivity of our search results. If a partner's page ranks high, it's because they have a good answer to your search, not because of their business relationship with us.

- Indexing more of AOL's content. Our goal is to organize all of the world's information. When we say "all the world's information," this includes AOL's. We're going to work with the webmasters at AOL -- just as we work with webmasters all over the world -- to help them understand how the Google crawler works (with regard to robots.txt, how to use redirects, non-html content, etc.) so we don't inadvertently overlook their content.

- AOL will receive a credit towards advertising purchased through Google's ad program. You might wonder if this will affect the ad auction. It won't. We don't offer preferential treatment on advertising (in either the auction or the display) to any of our partners.

- We have a service called "onebox" for which we provide some additional links separate from ads (sponsored links) and search results. (Try searching on [new york transit strike] and look for the news section.) AOL and its products have always been a part of onebox, along with many other providers, and will continue to be.

- There will be no banner ads on the Google homepage or web search results pages. There will not be crazy, flashy, graphical doodads flying and popping up all over the Google site. Ever.

Our service and our business works because of you - our users. You're important to us and something that we think about all the time -- as we build new products, negotiate deals, and think about what our future holds.

We're looking forward to what AOL can help us do for you, and believe that our new agreement with them will only create a better experience for you in 2006 and beyond -- one where you can continue to trust that we're giving you a result because it's the best one we can possibly provide.

Japanese Beauty Miwa Oshiro

Her name is Miwa Oshiro, a beautiful and young japanese actress/model. This popular lass was born in Hokkaido, Japan in August 26, 1983. She loves shopping and enjoys time in front of her PC.

Decking the halls

Posted by Shannon Bauman, AdSense Team

Whether you're gazing up at the glistening giant Christmas tree in Rockefeller Center in the heart of Manhattan or passing by the elaborate gingerbread house in the window of your local candy store, it's mighty hard to miss that the holiday season is in full swing. The creativity and energy people put into decorating is so inspiring, in fact, that we decided to do a little decorating of our own in Google AdSense (those "Ads by Google" that you've probably seen on lots of websites and blogs).

Like the cherries that Aunt Ellie puts in her famous fruitcake, we're spicing up our ads with some great Google-y images: snowmen, holiday packages, and Waldo, the ice skating penguin. Unlike the fruitcake, though, these ads don't last for years and years – they're just present until December 26. And here's what they look like.

AdSense publishers can opt in to the designs by going to their account settings. And in the new year, we'll be rolling out more designs for holidays and events around the world.

Japanese Actress/Model Yada Akiko

Yada Akiko, a popular Japanese actress was born in Tokyo on 23rd December 1979. The 168cm lass grew up in Kanagwa and was discovered while she was still a junior high school student.

Following that, she made appearances in Japanese drama, magazine covers and both print and TV advertisement, thus, gained a legion of fans over the years.

She enjoys listening to music, water sports, shopping, eating cheese cake, pasta and thai food.

Setting trends

Posted by Yu Chen, Software Engineer

As part of the personalization team, I'm pretty addicted to looking at my search history for interesting patterns. So I decided to go a step further and write a script to pull together some stats about how I was searching. We thought other people might like to see this sort of thing too, so today we launched a Trends feature that gives you a look at a list of your top searches and clicks and other info about your search activity.

To use it, you have to turn on Personalized Search and be signed in to your Google Account while you search. (If you don't have a Google Account, it's easy to create one for free.) Just click the "Trends" link on your Search History page, or go directly to your Trends.

Looking at 2005

Posted by Karen Wickre, Google Zeitgeist Team

This is the time of year when people ponder the past as they anticipate looking ahead. We couldn't resist trying to make sense of the year ourselves, so here's our annual concoction: the 2005 Year-End Google Zeitgeist. We chose a few key events and phenoms to study, and predictably found the patterns to be amusing or bemusing, challenging or heartening -- kind of like the year itself. Enjoy the view from here with our best wishes.

Maggie Q on Mission Impossible III

Racing down a waterway in Rome with Tom Cruise behind the wheel of a speedboat and passing breathtaking views of Vatican City in the background isn't a bad day at work. But for Maggie Q, that was also her very first day on the set of her American film debut.

"It's very easy to be intimidated in this industry," says Q, who will be introduced to audiences Stateside playing one of four IMF team members in Paramount's "Mission: Impossible III." "I just kept telling myself, ‘I've worked to get here.' "

Most of that work has been done in Hong Kong, where, for the past seven years, the half-Vietnamese, half-Caucasian beauty has been chased by paparazzi, thanks to prominent modeling stints and roles in big-budget action films like Media Asia's "Gen-Y Cops."

Now, after completing filming in Italy, Q is settling into a modest Beverly Hills home with her four affable pups. "There are so many lawyers and people here," she says. "Within two weeks of being here, I had, like, eight people working for me." Key to her new team is CAA's Josh Lieberman, who signed Q in August and counts the likes of Hilary Swank and Colin Farrell as clients.

"I'm lucky, and I'm happy," she says of her first gig with a Hollywood studio, "but this isn't the end-all be-all. It's about being here and doing good work. You can be here and do crap."

Worst Dressed Celebrity: Paris Hilton

Sexy Socialite Paris Hilton was voted by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), the year's worst-dressed celebrity. Hilton "earned" this title because she's wearing natural fur and keeps eating at Carl's Jr, a chain of fast food restaurants located mostly on the West Coast of the United States, boycotted by PETA.


The second place went to Kimberly Stewart, PETA writing that "she and best bud Paris are so clueless about animals". Stewart is followed by Lisa Gastineau, Victoria Gotti and Tara Reid.


Nevertheless, three big celebrities, which topped the last year's list, are notably absent from the top: Martha Stewart, Victoria "Posh Spice" Beckham and fur-wary Alicia Keys.


Martha, who is currently hosting a video exposé on FurIsDead.com, declared: "I used to wear real fur, but, like many others, I had a change of heart when I learned what actually happens to the animals."


Keys also stated during an interview for USA Today this year: "The worst was this fur collar, and PETA should have gotten me with red paint," she said. "It looked like I was being eaten by a big bear."

Stress: the holiday Grinch

From time to time, the resident physician at Google headquarters weighs in with her thoughts on healthy living. This is not medical advice, and you should check with your own doctor before pursuing any particular course of action.

Posted by Dr. Taraneh Razavi, M.D., Staff Doctor

Watching scenes of fists flying over an LCD monitor during a holiday sale made me wonder about stress, and how one can maintain a holiday spirit at a stressful time of year. According to Stedman's Medical Dictionary, it's stress, not the holidays, that make the body react to "forces of a deleterious nature that disturb its normal physiologic equilibrium." That sounds bad.

There is extensive research that confirms the harmful effects of stress when it occurs continuously with out the relaxation phase. In the international INTERHEART study, patients with a first heart attack reported significantly more stress in financial, home and work-related situations than the control studies. In another study of 1055 medical students who were followed for 36 years, it was found that those who had a higher anger response to stress had higher risk of developing premature heart disease (before age 55). Even exposure to traffic has been implicated. (Uptodate.com has more references if you are interested.)

Stress can also adversely impact high blood pressure, cholesterol, immune response, skin disorders, rheumatoid arthritis, intestinal motility, diabetes, cancer survival, and other conditions. It is now considered to be as much a risk factor as obesity, smoking, and sedentary life style so learning to counteract this response is important.

Although the external stress factors (irritating co-workers, hurricanes) are hard to control, there are several ways to reduce the internal stress response. Here's a short list - check it twice:

• Make a list and prioritize. It's OK if the holiday cards don't go out until 1/2...07.
• Exercise. No, it's not the answer to everything, but it has been shown to decrease the stress hormones.
• Take a vacation (break with tradition! A year-end getaway might help limit stress). If not a vacation, at least take a stroll, or take deep breaths while counting to 10.
• Hugging for 20 seconds has been shown to reduce blood pressure.

Beyond these immediate steps, you can find many resources via the University of Massachusetts' Stress Reduction Program and Center for Mindfulness in Medicine, including local referrals. Or check the nonprofit Omega Institute for a vacation centered around stress reduction.

If you still feel you're under severe stress, or you're not improving with any of the above measures, then please do consult your doctor. And here's my advice: if the turkey is rubbery, use it as an exercise ball. Happy holidays, everyone.

'Tis the season

Posted by Johanna Wright, Product Manager

We've done a bit of seasonal decorating -- even put up some holiday lights. Have you seen them yet? If you search on the names of, say, some special days in December, you just might.

In the material world

Posted by Andy Ku, International Product Marketing Manager

Next time you’re at the airport, scan the waiting area and see what people are doing. You’ll be shocked by the number who are doing absolutely nothing -- other than staring glassy-eyed at other people who are doing absolutely nothing. Naturally, these people had rushed in a mad frenzy an hour prior in order to get to the airport on time, only to sit and stare.

This observation is what spawned Google Space. We thought it would be useful to set up an area to give travellers unfettered Internet access so they might make use of that otherwise wasted time. Plus Googlers would get to talk to Google users, and hear what they like and don’t like about our products. Kind of like Google Labs, but with face to face feedback. Google Labs goes material.

We've been testing this concept for nearly a month at Heathrow Airport in London.
The response has thus far been enlightening and unexpected. Enlightening in that we’ve been learning tons about how to make our products more useful. Unexpected in the ways that people are using Google. One sales guy, David MacDonald, emailed this to the entire UK office:

“Yesterday whilst on the Google Space stand at Heathrow T1 I was approached by somebody who asked me if I worked for Google, as soon as I confirmed he smiled. He went on to explain that he had been in Pakistan as part of an International Disaster Response Team to help in the aftermath of the recent earthquake. They had been desperate to use what resources / maps they could find and that Google had been invaluable in helping. It turned out they had used Google Earth to trace the geography of the landscape, locate villages and roads.

He was so happy to see me and to show his appreciation, I really felt humbled and proud.”

This may be the best part of doing experimental projects. You think you’re onto a good idea, but then something unexpected like this makes it even better.

If people find Google Space useful, we might do this in other areas, or perhaps in other airports. Who knows? Let us know where you waste time – and you might see us there.

Searching for music

Posted by David Alpert, Search Quality Product Manager

It may come as no surprise, but I like to search for things on Google. Yep, when I'm looking for something, I always try it on Google first. And sometimes, that thing I'm looking for is music. Many of our users feel the same way, and we get a lot of search traffic on music terms like popular artists and albums.

A few of us decided to try to make the information you get for these searches even better, so we created a music search feature. Now you can search for a popular artist name, like the Beatles or the Pixies, and often Google will show some information about that artist, like cover art, reviews, and links to stores where you can download the track or buy a CD via a link at the top of your web search results page.

We do this sort of thing a lot -- adding a bit of special information to results for important searches. For example, we have movie showtimes and stock quotes. The more information we can make easily accessible with a simple search, the better.

Right now the music search feature mostly works for artists popular in the U.S. and a more limited number of artists from other countries, but we plan to expand it to classical music, worldwide artists, and lesser-known performers. Our list of music stores will also grow over time. If you’re a music store (selling downloads, music by subscription, or physical CDs) and would like to be listed, please get in touch.

You might be thinking,"why can't I just type in an album name or a song name and get the same music search results?” There are many album names and songs which are also plain English words. Sometimes users are looking for music information related to those words, and sometimes they aren’t. As we get better at knowing when our users want music information, we hope to expand this feature to include more queries. So keep searching, and we hope you'll be pleasantly surprised with the results. We always welcome your feedback.

New Firefox extensions

Posted by Glen Murphy, Software Engineer, Firefox Team

It wasn't that long ago that I was eating Vegemite on toast back in my homeland of Australia, idly wondering what my future employer Google might have in store for me. Now, five weeks after arriving in the country and being exposed to the Firefox codebase for the first time, and thanks to the array of geniuses sitting around me, it gives me great pleasure to announce the launch of my first project, Blogger Web Comments to Google Labs.

Originally conceived by my friend and mentor, Aaron Boodman, this Firefox extension shows you what bloggers around the world are saying about the websites you are viewing. If that doesn't satisfy, you can easily start or join one of these conversations using your Blogger blog. We've had plenty of fun reading what people have had to say about our own sites and the sites we visit every day, but best of all is when we discover new groups of people interested in the same niche sites we have been visiting for years.

Today we're also introducing a test release of Google Safe Browsing for Firefox, which should help protect you from phishing sites.

Check them both out on Google Labs.

Google Holiday Helper

Posted by Hunter Walk, Google Product Manager

First add 1/2 cup water and seasoning packet to 1 lb. ground beef... uh, wait -- this is the HOLIDAY Helper. Ooops. Okay, let's start over.

Holiday season can be a trying time -- shopping stress, end of year deadlines and A Christmas Story broadcast a thousand times on TV. We've got some quick tips to help you make sense of the madness.

1) Organize Your Wish List
Making a list and checking it twice is so much easier with Froogle's Shopping List, which lets you search for the items you want to buy, and then with just a click, save them for later. You can keep your list private or share it with friends who might just take the hint and buy you something you want this year instead of the "World's Ugliest Tie".

2) Track Packages
Will your package arrive in time? Entering a UPS, USPS or Federal Express tracking number into a Google search box will give you an update on your shipment before you can say "overnight shipping."

3) Find Toll-Free Numbers
OK, here's a secret "the man" doesn't want you to know. Some companies have a toll-free number that's buried deep on their website -- but it would take like a thousand clicks to find it, and these days, who has the time? One way to get to it more quickly is to search Google for the company name and the phrase "customer support." Like this: TiVo Customer Support.

An even trickier way to get at hard-to-reach customer support phone numbers is to search for the company name and the standard toll-free prefixes. That'll dig up some real gems. For example, "[company name] 800 OR 877 OR 888 OR 866". Give it a whirl -- and here's to less holiday stress.

Wild Angelina Jolie?

Angelina Jolie's lesbian lover has confessed the pair's steamy relationship never ended and says Jolie's new boyfriend Brad Pitt will never control the wild star.

Supermodel Jenny Shimizu - who had a relationship with the bisexual actress while filming Foxfire in 1993 - says they still have a strong connection. In a TV documentary the dark-haired beauty said: "There has never been an end to her and I. I think there never will be.

"She's always had lovers that she relies on. If she can ring you and you can meet up then she can take care of her sexual needs.

"Whenever she calls me up I visit her. She's the person I'll always care about and always help and always be there for."

The former Calvin Klein model also confessed she has doubts about what the future holds for Brad - who split from his wife, Friends star Jennifer Aniston before beginning his relationship with Jolie.

She said: "It seems he comes from a different place. He wants to have kids and he wants to have the perfect marriage. She's a tough woman who will do everything she wants to.

"I don't think there is any way of controlling Angelina. She's not going to be a housewife."

Build your own Google homepage

Posted by Adam Sah, Software Engineer

The personalized homepage was created to bring together the stuff that interests you from across the web. From an engineering perspective, this became an opportunity to create a framework for all types of content and information. Supporting RSS and Atom feeds was one step in that direction, and today we're excited to start supporting richer web apps as well. With the Google Homepage API, developers can now create modules for the personalized homepage. It's designed to be flexible and easy to use, and you don't need to download anything to create a module. To get the ball rolling, the team's created a few modules to add to the directory. So check these out and get started creating your own.

Same-Language Subtitling

The Google Foundation supports selected organizations whose work addresses the challenge of global poverty in ways that are effective, sustainable, and scalable. From time to time we will invite guest bloggers from grantee organizations to tell their story.

Recently, the Google Foundation awarded PlanetRead a grant to increase the number of SLS programs available, and Google is also supporting PlanetRead with free advertising through the Google Grants program and content hosting on Google Video.

When a billion people are illiterate (two-thirds of them women), and nearly half of the world lives on less than $2 a day, we believe it is important to examine the link between literacy and poverty. We are excited by the prospect of helping not hundreds, but millions, of people gain access to regular reading practice and improve literacy where it is needed most by supporting organizations like PlanetRead. - Google.org team

Posted by Dr. Brij Kothari, President, PlanetRead

My organization, PlanetRead, works in Mumbai and Pondicherry, India. We have developed a “Same-Language Subtitling” (SLS) methodology, which provides automatic reading practice to individuals who are excluded from the traditional educational system, or whose literacy needs are otherwise not being met. This is an educational program rooted in mass media that demonstrates how a specific literacy intervention can yield outstanding, measurable results, while complementing other formal and non-formal learning initiatives of the government, private sector, and civil society. We are fortunate to have just been selected as a Google Foundation grantee.

More than 500 million people in India have access to TV and 40 percent of these viewers have low literacy skills and are poor. Through PlanetRead’s approach, over 200 million early-literates in India are getting weekly reading practice from Same Language Subtitling (SLS) using TV. The cost of SLS? Every U.S. dollar covers regular reading for 10,000 people – for a year.

I hit upon this idea in 1996 through a most ordinary personal experience. While taking a break from dissertation writing at Cornell University, I was watching a Spanish film with friends to improve my Spanish. The Spanish movie had English subtitles, and I remember commenting that I wished it came with Spanish subtitles, if only to help us grasp the Spanish dialogue better. I then thought, ‘And if they just put Hindi subtitles on Bollywood songs in Hindi, India would become literate.’ That idea became an obsession. It was so simple, intuitively obvious, and scalable in its potential to help hundreds of millions of people read -- not just in India, but globally. So you can see how it works, we’ve uploaded some folk songs using SLS into Google Video. And we've uploaded other examples there as well.

The Indian Institute of Management in Ahmedabad and its Center for Educational Innovation helped me pursue research on SLS. In the beginning we showed Bollywood songs with and without SLS to people in villages, slums and railway stations and video-recorded their reactions. We then piloted SLS in schools and on TV in Gujarat state while measuring reading improvement. This early work convinced us that we not only had an idea that would provide automatic reading practice, it was hugely popular (later, the ratings demonstrated this). After five challenging years of developing and strengthening the program, SLS went on national TV throughout India. On the PlanetRead website, there are some video clips of SLS featured in a Bollywood film. Click on the “Video” link on the upper right to see the reaction of Indian villagers to the SLS experience.

There’s more on the effectiveness of this approach in an article in the MIT journal Information Technologies and International Development (it's a PDF file).

The idea of SLS tends to divide people into two camps – those who think it’s too simple to achieve anything, and those who understand that its simplicity and ability to integrate into popular culture can fundamentally alter the approach to the massive problem of low literacy. Now, a decade later, it is clear that the challenge of implementing SLS is changing minds used to resource-hungry approaches to literacy.

Fortunately, in India, several senior policy-makers in broadcasting and education are championing SLS. We feel it could be a breakthrough in how we approach literacy: SLS is inclusive, accessible, and builds upon popular songs and Bollywood films to create an enjoyable and effective learning experience. With support from Google, we have the opportunity to reshape the literacy landscape in India, home to a third of the world’s non-literates and early-literates. If this experiment succeeds in India, SLS could even go global!

Heidi Klum nervous ahead of the World Cup 2006 draw

Supermodel Heidi Klum is as nervous as the 32 qualified teams who will be about the draw for the world's biggest sporting event, which is being hosted in her native Germany next June.

"Your heart is bound to beat a little faster," she said this week, but at least she's got the outfit sorted.

"I've picked out a turquoise dress, but everyone knows what women are like, so I might change my mind at the last minute," she said.

Indeed, uncertainty will be the theme for the ceremony. FIFA expects 350 million viewers to watch the World Cup 2006 draw live as it is beamed from a 4000-capacity glass hall at the Leipzig Messe in eastern Germany to television sets across the globe.

Plenty of the game's legends are in town to dip their hands in the tombola and add sparkle to the draw's unique recipe for excitement.

Brazil's Pele, Holland's Johan Cruyff, Cameroon's Roger Milla and Germany's own Franz Beckenbauer are just a few.

A cure for the common inbox

Posted by Jared Jacobs, Gmail Engineer

Ever get the feeling that your email experience is a little too predictable? I certainly have. Over the past few months, I've been working on Gmail Clips, a new feature that can help mix things up a bit. Starting this week, you can see headlines from your favorite blogs and news sites right above your Inbox. Gmail tips and relevant text ads appear from time to time as well.

I had a lot of fun working on this feature, and biased as I may be, I have to say I really love Clips. No new mail? Great, then I have time to read why pasta is made in different shapes. And even if I do have mail I should be getting to, maybe I'm in the mood to digress for a moment and investigate The Divine Secrets of the Cycle Commuter.

Clips are full of headlines like these. They can come from any website that publishes an RSS or Atom feed. We've included some popular feeds for you to choose from, but it's easy to tailor Clips to your interests (for example, I get running tips). You can browse popular feeds, search for feeds using keywords, or add a specific feed—like, say, your friend's blog, or maybe the Google Blog — by pasting its URL in your Clips settings.

Now if you're one of those task-oriented types with no time for diversions, you can always turn Clips off. But then you'd miss cow-tipping exposed as a near-impossibility.

Public transit via Google

Posted by Avichal Garg, Product Manager, Transit Team

One of the best things about working at Google is a policy known as "20 percent time," which you can read about on our jobs page or in this post. Having the freedom to pursue projects during 20 percent of our work week means engineers can pursue a breadth of unique and interesting ideas without having to wait for anyone else.

So not too long ago, a few engineers from San Francisco, New York, and Zurich -- all of whom regularly use public transportation -- decided that being able to plan local trips without having to go to multiple websites, and done in an easy, intuitive way would be a useful product. So they devoted their 20 percent time to building it. As it happens, a lot of people thought this was a great idea, and our small team quickly grew with "twenty-percenters" from across Google.

Today, we are happy and proud to tell you that their efforts have resulted in a new Google Labs experiment: Google Transit Trip Planner. With it, commuters will be able to easily access public transit schedules, routes, and plan trips using their local public transportation options. This first release covers only the Portland, Oregon metro area, but we are working to expand our coverage very soon. (If you're from a local transit agency interested in being included in Google Transit, we would love to speak with you. Just write to us.)

We chose to launch with the Portland metro area for a couple of reasons. TriMet, Portland's transit authority, is a technological leader in public transportation. The team at TriMet is a group of tremendously passionate people dedicated to serving their community. And TriMet has a wealth of data readily available that they were eager to share with us for this project. This combination of great people and great data made TriMet the ideal partner.

Public transportation offers a unique type of data that people use in very different ways than most of the data Google has worked with before. We really want to understand how people use Google Transit and the challenges we'll face as we cover additional cities. To that end, we'd love to hear your feedback!

Try some of the queries you can do in Portland on Google Transit:

Leave now
pdx to 100 ne couch st, portland, oregon
4412 se 17th ave portland, oregon to hillsboro, oregon

Choose a specific time
pdx to portland, oregon at 7pm
100 nw couch st, portland to hillsboro, oregon by 8pm
portland to pdx at 7pm on 12/09/05

[Updated with links to results]

Korean Actress Kim Min

Kim Min, 30, emigrated to the United States when she was in elementary school. She lived and studied in California for many years, but then decided to return to Korea in 1995 upon graduation from college. After spending some time writing a screenplay, she returned briefly to the U.S. to work on the television show "Hollywood Reporter", interviewing such celebrities as Michael Jordan and Al Pacino. Briefly thereafter she was offered a role in E J-yong's acclaimed 1998 feature An Affair, and she has been acting in Korean film and television ever since.

Kim has been branching out into international roles recently, in part due to her excellent English skills. In 2000, Kim acted in The Accidental Spy together with Hong Kong action star Jackie Chan. The following year she took a minor role in a Japanese-Korean coproduction named Go which was chosen as the Japanese contender for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar.

Her most recent project teamed her with Lee Mi-sook in Oh! LaLa Sisters by Park Je-hyun, the director of The Legend of Gingko.

Acumen visits Google

The Google Foundation supports select organizations whose work addresses the challenge of global poverty in ways that are effective, sustainable, and scalable. From time to time we will invite guest bloggers from grantee organizations to tell their story. Here's the first of this occasional series.

Posted by Jacqueline Novogratz, CEO, Acumen Fund

Arriving at Google, we somehow found a spot in the overflowing lot and emerged onto a sprawling campus reminiscent of my days at Stanford. At the front desk, our team commented on the simple yet impressive display we spotted on a monitor depicting the volume of searches originating from every point on the globe with colored dots. Interconnectedness: Acumen Fund is building a global community of like-minded individuals committed to solving problems of poverty through market-based approaches and enabling poor individuals to make their own choices.

We followed the yellow brick road to Building 40, past the packed beach volleyball courts and an outdoor café. More than 100 people came to our talk. I was introduced by Sheryl Sandberg, who is Google’s VP of Global Online Sales and Operations and the current acting director of Google.org. Sheryl emphasized Google.org's aim: to work with ventures that are sustainable, collaborative, and able to achieve scale. (To that end, the Google Foundation already supports Acumen Fund; read more here.)

My talk (it was taped) focused on Acumen Fund's mission: to build blueprints for delivering critical goods and services to people earning less than $4 a day. If we can determine better ways for making water, health, housing, and energy available to the poor – and make them affordable and accessible – I believe we'll go a long way toward ending poverty. I spoke about some of Acumen Fund’s key investments: For example, our malaria bednet investment in Tanzania. It employs more than 2,000 women to produce more than 3 million long-lasting bednets per year, impregnated with insecticide to stop mosquitoes. We're hoping to manufacture 6 million of these by the end of 2006, which will mean another 12 million people protected from malaria. This is a good start in teaching us critical lessons about how sustainable enterprises can make an enduring contribution toward solving pressing social problems.

Even more important, our work teaches us what the poor want as consumers. And this is where Acumen Fund will see the greatest returns: the more we understand who poor people are, the better solutions we can develop based on their choices and needs. Indeed, finding iterative – or possibly revolutionary – improvements to delivery systems is where the partnership between Google and Acumen Fund could have great impact. Larry and Sergey believe that scale is key, as is sustainability, and these are the core concepts driving all of Acumen Fund's work.

As a first step, we hope to collaborate with interested Googlers to find better ways to learn what works around the world. Identifying powerful solutions to poverty that are useful to people in different settings, and that are market-driven, scalable, and sustainable, is our greatest challenge. Second, we're hoping to strengthen how the world measures both social and financial returns to investments in delivering critical goods and services to the poor. Like Google, we hold a deep belief in the power of measuring everything we can.

This unique partnership will enable us to do this work in a more powerful way, and to share lessons more broadly. At the end of the day, both Google and Acumen Fund are trying to bring solutions to the world that enable people to make their own choices, solve their own problems. This is the only way we will really be able to end poverty.

How I Got to Google, Ch. 2: Tale of a T-shirt

Posted by Trisha Weir, Hardware Operations

On Wednesday, April 30th, 2003, I was swimming towards the shore as fast as I could paddle my surfboard. I was in the ocean near Todos Santos, Mexico; a storm had come up, the waves were crashing huge, the wind was blowing like crazy, and I realized I'd gotten in rather over my head.

On Wednesday, May 7th, 2003, I was standing in a room filled floor-to-ceiling with more computers than I'd ever seen in my life. My fingers were shaking as I played surgeon to a webserver, pushing tiny jumpers onto pins on the motherboard, cold blasts of air conditioning whipping my hair into my face like some tense scene from an Arctic action movie, and once again it occurred to me that I had quite possibly gotten in over my head.

How I went from being a recent college grad on a travel kick to a Google datacenter technician in one week is a whirlwind (and windblown) story. I'd seen the job posting a few days before I left for Mexico, but I figured it was a long shot; I had the skills, but didn't have much work experience.

So I sent Google a love letter. I told them that yes, I could fix computers, and yes, I'd been running Linux at home for two years. And I told them the truth: they'd get a hundred job seekers with those skills, but I had something those applicants didn't: a Google T-shirt.

I talked about how I didn't normally wear the logos of companies I had no affiliation with, but that I wore my Google shirt with pride, because I admired Google so much -- they were smart, they treated people well (users and employees alike), and they made good products. But beyond that, I could tell Google was special, that all that innovation was going to lead to something extraordinary. And I wanted to be part of it. Also, I wanted another T-shirt.

I got both. After I staggered up onto the beach that first Wednesday, I went into town in search of Internet access and, in a net cafe with a thatched roof and a 56k modem connection, found waiting for me an email from a Google recruiter who had plucked my application from a pool of dozens because of my T-shirt-themed cover letter. On Thursday I flew back to the U.S. On Friday I had a phone screen. On Monday I endured three hours of onsite interviews. And on Tuesday, the recruiter called back and said, "Welcome to Google. Can you start tomorrow?"

I survived the surf at Todos Santos, and I managed to get through my first day in the Googleplex without crashing that datacenter. And the message I have for all my recent college grad peers is simple: Don't underestimate the power of your favorite T-shirt, and don't neglect your email while on vacation. Either one may hold the key to your future.

Lots to Talk about!

Posted by Mike Jazayeri, Google Talk Product Manager

The rainy season and short days are back in full swing in the Pacific Northwest and the Google Talk team, based here in Kirkland, Washington, has been making the best use of all this time indoors. Thanks to their hard work, there are a lot of exciting things in store for Google Talk in the coming months, and we thought the best way to tell you about them was to create a blog (powered by Blogger, of course!). We'll keep you posted on new features, happenings in the community, and progress toward our goal of enabling customer choice in Internet communications through open standards and interoperability. From time to time we might even tell you about some of our favorite Seattle hangouts and traditions, too.

Girl of the Month: Japanese Swimsuit Idol Sayuri Anzu

Sayuri Anzu is December's girl. Born in Kanagawa on September 20, 1983, she is considered as one of the top swimsuit idols in Japan. Sayuri Anzu has graced the cover of almost every major men’s magazine including the infamous Sabra.

Name: Anzu Sayuri
Blood Type : O
Date of Birth : 20 Septembre 1983
Birthplace : Kanagawa
Sign of the Zodiac : Virgo
Height : 164 cm
Weight : 45 Kg

Lin Chi-Ling is Back!

At 1.74m without her stilettos, Lin Chi-Ling (林志玲) seems such a towering lass that most of us may reach only the height of her chest.

Which is probably why so much attention has been paid to this area in the past week.

The 32-year-old made her return to showbiz earlier this month after taking four months off to recuperate from a July horse-riding accident in China.

In September, Hong Kong's Next Magazine quoted a doctor saying that she had saline implants, which burst during her fall.

That kicked off fervent speculation about the ups and downs of Chi-Ling's boobs.

But the media-savvy stunner turned it to her advantage, and managed to 'create' a separate identity for them by referring to them as mi mi (Mandarin slang for breasts).

She also staged a spectacular return at the Golden Bell Awards last Saturday, with 10 cleavage-baring outfit changes.

Chi-Ling has declared her intention to sue Next Magazine for insinuating that her assets are less than authentic. When asked if the beauty underwent a breast enlargement, her mom simply replied to the press, "They are real, period."

Thanks Victoria doodlers!

Posted by Dennis Hwang, Webmaster and Google Doodler.

Last week Google opened our new office in the Victoria area of London, and to mark the occasion we invited students from nearby schools to create their own Google Doodles from our logo. My fellow judges and I were basically considering three qualities: the originality of the doodle idea or topic; integration of the design with the Google logo; and sheer creativity. We received hundreds of entries with all sorts of themes, ranging from serious topics like the Asian tsunami and the Battle of Trafalgar to an entire logo transformed into a bunch of eyes staring at each other. In the end, we chose these five finalists. And our winner, which graced our U.K. home page for a full day, was this charming doodle from 11-year-old Lisa Waiwaina:









In the end, I was simply blown away by the amazing quality of the work, especially from younger artists up to around age 11 (the bunnies drawn by 5-year-olds were simply awesome). It was a good reminder that staying in touch with one’s inner child can be a key to creativity. Now, back to my secret agenda of searching for a young apprentice...

Don't drop while you shop

Posted by Jessica Lee, Associate Product Manager

There's bravery, and then there's hitting the mall the day after Thanksgiving, also known as Black Friday. Which is one reason we just launched a feature on Froogle that helps you to shop locally -- and that in turn might help you through the upcoming shopping ordeal(s). Now you can search over the product inventory of brick & mortar stores in your neighborhood to compare online deals and local sales all at the same time. Instead of wandering aimlessly through crowded malls looking for that elusive perfect gift (not to mention a parking spot), just find it on Froogle, call the store to reserve it and go pick it up.

Froogle local shopping is also useful for finding items that you want to try before you buy (clothing), or where shipping is expensive (heavy things like sofas or cars). Just add a location to your Froogle query and we'll look for products in your area.

Right now we have local content from hundreds of merchants across the U.S., but we encourage any merchant with a website to upload their own inventory (did we mention that it's free?) via Google Base. Get started by going to www.google.com/sellonfroogle.

Besides finding stuff closer to home, Froogle now offers more options for refining your searches, including brand names and related search suggestions. If you search for [home theater system], we suggest brands like Bose and Kenwood, as well as queries that will help narrow your results, like [wireless home theater system].

Hope you find these features useful during this holiday shopping season. And have a happy Turkey Day!

Popular Hong Kong Actress Cecilia Cheung

Crushed part of her vertebra during a stunt-gone-wrong for an event in a charity concert, and nearly snapped her spinal cord in the beginning of 2002.

In 1998 Cecilia made commercial for a lemon tea product that brought her a lot of attention and Stephen Chow cast her in his film King of Comedy as a tough hostess girl with a tender heart hidden behind walls of attitude.

She bazzled the critics and the audience with her clean fresh looks, talent and incredible charm. Cecilia moved to Australia when she was fourteen with her mother after her parents were divorced. In 1998 she came to Hong Kong on a vacation and was spotted on the street by a modelling agent. She made the commercial and the rest is history.

She almost immediately became the "It" girl in HK and was seen everywhere. Her tear-jerker Fly Me to Polaris cemented her position as the hottest new actress around. Like most new actresses she had also cut some music as well. (N.B. One of the songs she sang in Fly Me to Polaris won the HKFA Best Song Award).

Cecilia is one of the most natural actress to come out of Hong Kong in a long time, but she does so much PR and the press hounds her constantly (about her love life and her father's connection to the triads and various threats made to her from certain triads). while doing a charity stunt in a car that went very wrong, she was badly injured and paralysis appeared to be a very real possilibty. Fortunately, she recovered and has revved up her career with a number of performances in The Lion Roars, Second Time Around and Cat and Mouse. One of her very best performances came in a Korean film - Failan - a tragic tale of a Chinese woman marrying in for the sake of being able to work - she will bring you tears with her restrained characterization. Other films to her credit includes, Legend of Speed, Twelve Night, Fantasia and a small part in Tokyo Raiders.

Wi-Fi in Mountain View

Posted by Minnie Ingersoll, Google WiFi Product Manager

There have been reports that Google plans to unwire the world with free Wi-Fi. In fact, though, our plan is a lot simpler: to provide free Wi-Fi to the city of Mountain View, where we're headquartered. Inside Google, people think this is a plot to make sure our Mountain View employees never stop working -- but it's actually a community outreach program.

To this end, I am proud to be working with the City Council, the city librarian, the police department, numerous neighborhood associations, both of the school superintendents, and (of course) the bookmobile driver. And huge thanks in particular to Ellis Burns at the City of Mountain View.

We plan to build something exciting here now that the city has approved our proposal. As I wrote in my letter to the City Council, wireless broadband has huge potential to provide inexpensive access to the Internet. Instead of trenching fiber, wireless broadband requires a bucket truck, a lamppost, and 5 minutes of installation. So look for me in a bucket truck soon!

Get News in Portuguese

Posted by Bruno Fonseca, Software Engineer

We've just launched two different editions of Google News: one for Brazil and one for Portugal. Google News gathers stories from more than 200 news sources in Portuguese worldwide, and automatically arranges them to present the most relevant news first. We're very pleased to be able to help Brazilian and Portuguese readers stay informed about the issues that matter most to them. Read more (in Portuguese) about this launch.

For a group of Google Engineers, it's especially exciting, because in July, we opened an engineering office in Brazil. These Google News Portuguese editions are the first launches our team in Belo Horizonte has participated in. Here's to many more!

Of course, Google News Brazil and Google News Portugal are small steps towards our mission. You can help by sending your feedback, thoughts and ideas. Divirta-se!

Korean Singer/Actress Lee Jung Hyun

Lee Jung Hyun is Korea's popular pop/trance singer well known for her catchy song tunes. The 25 year old made her movie debut at the age of 16 in Ggotip (Petal). She was also featured in the movies such as Ggotip, Chim Hyang, Maria's Yuh in Sook, and the TV shows Ga Seum Eul Yuh Ruh Ra & 7 Spoons.

Her music tends to be primarily dance with a heavy techno influence. She released her 5th album titled, Passion earlier this year and she incorporated Latin style of music, complete with Spanish Guitar and flamenco-style tap dance. Her first single, Wa (Come) topped the Korean charts for three weeks, while her third, Ba Kkwo (Change) won awards for Best Song and Most Broadcasted Song. Many of her songs are sung in an angry mood, from the point of view of a rejected lover.

Wa and Ba Kkwo were also included in the Korean release of the game Dance Dance Revolution. Fan-made DDR dance steps of her other works are popular with players of DDR simulators.

An interesting fact about Lee Jung Hyun is that when she performs on stage she attatches a wireless microphone to her finger, so that her dancing will not interfere with the sound. The action she uses when singing into her microphone has became a trademark of her style.

She may be petite, but the energy she exudes is powerful and passionate. She enjoys wakeboarding, skydiving, scuba Diving and sattelite Observation. In late 2004, Lee Jung Hyun debuted in Japan with the single Heaven. Her album hit number three in Japan and it's no wonder. Fans there adore her as much as her fans in Korea.

Judging Book Search by its cover

Posted by Jen Grant, Product Marketing Manager

What's in a name? Quite a bit, actually; what you call yourself says a lot about what you think you are. And we've been thinking lately that Google Print should really be called Google Book Search.

Why the change? Well, one factor was all the comments we got about how excited people were that Google Print would help them print out their documents, or web pages they visit -- which of course it won't.

More important, the change reflects our product's evolution. When we launched Google Print, our goal was to make it easier for users to discover books. Now that we're starting to achieve that, we think a more descriptive name will help clarify what our users can do with it: namely, search the full text of books to find ones that interest them and learn where to buy or borrow them.

No, we don't think that this new name will change what some folks think about this program. But we do believe it will help a lot of people understand better what we're doing. We want to make all the world's books discoverable and searchable online, and we hope this new name will help keep everyone focused on that important goal.

Knowledge is power

Posted by Grace Kwak, Google Sitemaps team

We launched Google Sitemaps this past summer as a way for webmasters to give us information we could use to better crawl their sites. Since then, we've been adding to the kinds of information we give back. In our latest release, we provide even more interesting statistics that webmasters can use to improve the way their pages work with web crawlers, which will ultimately benefit their visitors.

I think the most fun are the new "query stats" -- they show top Google search queries that return pages from a site, as well as the top search queries that led users to click on a site. We've also enhanced the crawl errors we show, like specific HTTP errors Google runs into when crawling a page.

If you're a webmaster and you haven't used the Sitemaps program yet, you can now create a Sitemaps account and add a site to it even before you create a Sitemap. Once you verify ownership of the site, we'll show you all of these statistics and error details. You can always add a Sitemap later. Read more on the Sitemaps blog or just log in to get going.

First Base

Posted by Bindu Reddy, Product Manager

Today we're excited to announce Google Base, an extension of our existing content collection efforts like web crawl, Google Sitemaps, Google Print and Google Video. Google Base enables content owners to easily make their information searchable online. Anyone, from large companies to website owners and individuals, can use it to submit their content in the form of data items. We'll host the items and make them searchable for free. There's more info here.

Some organizations are already using Google Base. Here are a few examples.

• "Students need as much information as possible when they are searching for the right college or university. Google Base helps us reach students and parents and deliver more of the information they need when making important college decisions." - Hal Higginbotham, President, CollegeBoard.com

• "We want to use knowledge and information about the environment to help motivate more responsible public and private action. With Google Base, we can bring the public key insights on sustainability issues – like climate change, human health, and resource consumption – and bring about change." – Amy Cassara, Senior Associate, World Resources Institute

• "CareerBuilder.com's business model is built on providing employers with as many avenues as possible to connect with job seekers. Feeding our jobs to Google Base further extends our distribution network, providing employers with added support in marketing their open positions." - Richard Castellini, VP of Consumer Marketing, CareerBuilder.com

• "We compile an enormous amount of valuable data on fine art and artists, and we want collectors, dealers, students and art aficionados to have easy access to this information. Google Base enables us to reach more people researching art and get them the information they need." - Brent Peich, Director of Marketing, Artnet

• "Our mission is to make it easy for small businesses to use the web to drive in-store sales. Google Base gives us an ideal outlet to promote and distribute content about local products more broadly." - Kendall Fargo, Founder & CEO, StepUp Commerce

Right now, there are two ways to submit data items to Google Base. Individuals and small website owners can use an interactive user interface; larger organizations and sites can use the bulk uploads option to send us content using standard XML formats.

Rather than impose specific schemas and structures on the world, Google Base suggests attributes and item types based on popularity, which you can use to define and attach your own labels and attributes to each data item. Then searchers can find information more quickly and effectively by using these labels and attributes to refine their queries on the experimental version of Google Base search.

This beta version of Google Base is another small step toward our goal, creating an online database of easily searchable, structured information. As always, we welcome your feedback and ideas.

A man with a phone in Nantucket ...

Posted by Matt Waddell, Google Mobile Team

Underneath a cell tower nearby
SMS I decided to try:
[t to french grant a loan], [6 shekels in kroon]
Now a polyglot banker am I.*

*This limerick was inspired by Google SMS, and its new translation and currency conversion features. And if you're wondering, as I was: kroon is pronounced "krone."

The circle of analytics

Posted by Brett Crosby, Product Marketing Manager

“Analytics” is a sturdy business catchword, and of course “web analytics” has become its own buzz-phrase in recent years. The tools and services of the web analytics world give businesses precise information on what customers want, so that they can improve their online marketing and website content. These services help provide answers to questions like: Which keywords attract the most visitors? Which email campaigns create more customers? And how to design web page content that holds people’s attention?

We think every online business can benefit from knowing the answers, so today we’re launching Google Analytics. The same service (which used to be called Urchin from Google) used by dozens of Fortune 500 companies is now available to every business on the web. We’ve integrated it with AdWords, it’s easier to use – and it’s free. We hope that Google Analytics will help improve the overall web – one site at a time.

The breakfast business

Posted by Josef Desimone, Executive Chef

At a technology company you might think no one's around for a morning meal, but that's not so here in Mountain View. The cafe I run on campus is open for breakfast from 8-9:30 a.m. five days a week. My team of 12 feeds a steady crowd of about 750 every morning -- and these folks are big on breakfast. Our record so far is making 201 (custom) omelets in 90 minutes. We blend 300 12 oz. fruit smoothies that typically disappear in an hour. Some other stats from the front lines (all of these are per-day numbers, by the way):

- Googlers prefer Canadian bacon (45 lbs.) to chicken-apple sausage (30 lbs.)
- Steel-cut oatmeal (10-12 gallons) wins out over organic grits (6-8 gallons)
- We polish off 5 cases of fresh fruit (cantaloupe, honeydew, pineapple)
- Devour 160 breakfast burritos (eggs, veggies, cheese)
- We cook 80-100 lbs. of red bliss potatoes
- We use 2 gallons of egg whites (for the omelets)
- Googlers gulp down 9 gallons of fresh coffee every morning (just in our cafe)

My biggest surprises: people consume 1-1/2 gallons of kombucha tea - a little-known fermented drink - every day; and against all logic, some people ask for an omelet that's half egg whites, half regular eggs. What can I say? We aim to please.

Paris Hilton Crash Test

Celebrity actress Paris Hilton, whose Bentley was damaged in a videotaped crash that spawned an Internet sensation and a police investigation, was the "only victim" of the incident, her spokesman said today.

The videotape released by celebrity website TMZ.com shows Hilton's companion, Greek shipping heir Stavros Niarchos, slamming her luxury car into a truck as the couple left a Hollywood nightclub with at least two other people.

The car is then seen speeding away from the scene with a scratched hood and Niarchos at the wheel as bystanders and celebrity photographers scatter. Later, Niarchos is shown speaking to Los Angeles police officers who have pulled him over.

The officers then allowed Niarchos and Hilton to leave with their friends, identified by TMZ.com as rocker Rod Stewart's daughter, Kimberly Stewart, and Talan Torriero, star of MTV's reality show Laguna Beach.

Torriero is heard telling his friends, "I'm the only sober one, let's just go." Hilton, star of the popular Fox reality show The Simple Life, blows a kiss to one of the policemen and is heard saying, "Thank you officer - we love the police," before she steps into the car.

The Los Angeles Police Department said it has opened an investigation to determine whether the officers should have detained Niarchos, a student at the University of Southern California, to determine if he was driving under the influence of alcohol.

Figure Skater Katarina Witt

Katarina Witt was born December 3, 1965, in East Berlin, Germany. She is an ice skater - athlete, an artist, an actress, a television personality and a business woman. A true superstar, few woman have a celebrated talent with more style and grace than this striking German beauty. In the course of a truly unique career, she's won more titles than anyone, and has become the most successful figure-skater of all time.

Katarina's humble beginning is from the former East German city of Karl Marx Stadt, where she had dominated the women's figure skating in the 1980's. She began skating at the age of five at the Karl Marx Stadt Sports Club. While Katarina went to school, she learned to skate under the direction of Bernd Egert. When she was nine, Katarina was placed under the coaching direction of one of worlds most prominent skating coaches, Jutta Muller. Katarina was soon spending four hours a day on the ice, sacrificing leisure time and family life for the sport she so loved.

In 1990, she won an Emmy Award for her starring performance in the title role of HBO's "Carmen on Ice." She also starred in the CBC-TV special "Women in Red" which was broadcast throughout Europe and Canada. Katarina has enjoyed continued success as a performing professional touring North America with several figure skating troupes, including "Skating I & II". Katarina made her skating debut with "Discover Card Stars on Ice".

In recent years, Katarina has become a media fixture lending her talents to television, motion pictures and sports commentary. Katarina co-produced a modern adaptation of the classic "Cinderella", called "Ice Princess". On two occasions, 'People' magazine has named her "One of the 50 Most Beautiful People in the World".

After regaining her amateur status in 1993, Katarina competed in her third Olympic Winter Games at Lillehammer, Norway where she finished sixth. Katarina was given the Jim Thorpe Pro Sports Award for her outstanding achievements as an athlete, and is also the first German ever to be given the award. Katarina has also provided colorful sports commentary for CBS-TV of the Olympic Winter Games in Albertville, France, the World Figure Skating Championships in Prague, Czechoslovakia, and German TV ZDF coverage of the World Figure Skating Championships in Munich.

Today, she has established herself as a businesswoman with her own company, Witt Sports & Entertainment GmbH. Katarina makes her home in Berlin and New York, and her name stands for quality.

Vint Cerf speaks out on net neutrality

Posted by Alan Davidson, Washington Policy Counsel, DC office

Congress is holding a hearing tomorrow, Wednesday, November 8th, on "network neutrality" and a big new telecommunications bill affecting the Internet. Vint Cerf, our net neutrality guru, was unable to testify because of a little awards ceremony at the White House (congratulations, Vint!), but here is his letter to the Hill outlining our concerns. Microsoft will be testifying for our side, demonstrating that inside the Beltway, we agree on a lot.

You can follow the proceedings here -- and we hope you do. This bill could fundamentally alter the fabulously successful end-to-end Internet.


November 8, 2005

The Honorable Joe Barton
Chairman
Committee on Energy and Commerce
U.S. House of Representatives
Washington, D.C. 20515

The Honorable John D. Dingell
Ranking Member
Committee on Energy and Commerce
U.S. House of Representatives
Washington, D.C. 20515

Dear Chairman Barton and Ranking Member Dingell,

I appreciate the inquiries by your staff about my availability to appear before the Committee and to share Google’s views about draft telecommunications legislation and the issues related to "network neutrality." These are matters of great importance to the Internet and Google welcomes the Committee’s hard work and attention. The hearing unfortunately conflicts with another obligation, and I am sorry I will not be able to attend. (Along with my colleague Robert Kahn, I am honored to be receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom on Wednesday at the White House for our work in creating the Internet protocol TCP/IP.)

Despite my inability to participate in the planned hearing in person, I hope that you will accept some brief observations about this legislation.

The remarkable social impact and economic success of the Internet is in many ways directly attributable to the architectural characteristics that were part of its design. The Internet was designed with no gatekeepers over new content or services. The Internet is based on a layered, end-to-end model that allows people at each level of the network to innovate free of any central control. By placing intelligence at the edges rather than control in the middle of the network, the Internet has created a platform for innovation. This has led to an explosion of offerings – from VOIP to 802.11x wi-fi to blogging – that might never have evolved had central control of the network been required by design.

My fear is that, as written, this bill would do great damage to the Internet as we know it. Enshrining a rule that broadly permits network operators to discriminate in favor of certain kinds of services and to potentially interfere with others would place broadband operators in control of online activity. Allowing broadband providers to segment their IP offerings and reserve huge amounts of bandwidth for their own services will not give consumers the broadband Internet our country and economy need. Many people will have little or no choice among broadband operators for the foreseeable future, implying that such operators will have the power to exercise a great deal of control over any applications placed on the network.

As we move to a broadband environment and eliminate century-old non-discrimination requirements, a lightweight but enforceable neutrality rule is needed to ensure that the Internet continues to thrive. Telephone companies cannot tell consumers who they can call; network operators should not dictate what people can do online.

I am confident that we can build a broadband system that allows users to decide what websites they want to see and what applications they want to use – and that also guarantees high quality service and network security. That network model has and can continue to provide economic benefits to innovators and consumers -- and to the broadband operators who will reap the rewards for providing access to such a valued network.

We appreciate the efforts in your current draft to create at least a starting point for net neutrality principles. Google looks forward to working with you and your staff to draft a bill that will maintain the revolutionary potential of the broadband Internet.

Thank you for your attention and for your efforts on these important issues.

Sincerely,

Vinton Cerf
Chief Internet Evangelist
Google Inc.

Search and replace

Posted by David Bercovich, Product Marketing Manager, Google Enterprise Team

We’re hearing a fair number of stories from customers using our enterprise search products about how pleased their users are when they replace another search engine with a Google Search Appliance or a Google Mini. Customers like National Semiconductor, which saw search volume increase by 8-10x, and the National Park Service, where website complaints declined by a factor of 20.

These good results have inspired us to launch a search replacement program: any company that replaces their legacy search engine with a Google Search Appliance will receive a free Google Mini. Read more at www.google.com/switch.

Get lost and found on your phone

Posted by Matt Waddell, Google Mobile Team

You know that saying, "Wherever you go, there you are"? Now it makes sense to me, thanks to the new Google Local for mobile. In fact, it inspired me to write this song. Enjoy, and happy trails. (You'll need Macromedia's Flash Player to hear it.)



You can also save the music file to your computer. (Right-click in Windows, or control-click on a Mac, and save.)

Get lost and found on your phone.

Walkin' 'round a new town,
looking for a way around.
Askin' locals for their thoughts
'bout nearby Chinese restaurants...
they tell you to get lost --
get lost and found on your phone.

Take Google Local on the go,
get listings, maps and aerial views.
Call directly from your search results
and even keep search history too.
Download from Google today.

Wrestlin' with a paper map,
tryin' to figure out just where you're at,
how to get from point A to point B,
better leave the directions to J2ME.
So you can get lost --
get lost and found on your phone.

Zoom in, zoom out,
drag maps up down left right and you'll see...
where you want to go on your mobile phone,
in lucid satellite imagery.
Download from Google today.

Place Google Local in your hand --
first, you need a data plan.
Your phone must handle Java too.
It helps if it is somewhat new.
To download, here is what you do:

Browse Google dot com slash g-l-m on your desktop.
Tell us 'bout your phone,
and we'll show you a link to the file in a blink
and you're ready to start...

Gettin' lost on your phone.
Get lost and found on your phone.
Download from Google today.
Get lost and found on your phone...

Exquisite Beauty Josie Maran

This chestnut haired exquisite beauty is best known for her work in the Summer '98 and Fall '98 Guess? advertising campaigns. Josie Maran was born and raised just outside San Francisco in Menlo Park, and graduated from an all-girls private school. Although she now resides in Manhattan, California will always be considered home. Following the path of many other models, Maran did not initially aspire to be a model.

She was hanging out with her friends at a BBQ in her hometown three years ago when a woman asked her to be in a fashion show. This request was the beginning of her modeling career, since a modeling agent at the show spotted Maran and encouraged her to start modeling.

Presently managed by the Elite Model Management, Maran has graced such magazine covers as Fitness, Glamour and Teen, as well as Shape, Seventeen, Stuff, and Sport. Apart from her work in the Guess? advertising campaign, she also appeared in ads for Maybelline and American Eagle Outfitters. People may recognize her as the main female character in the Backstreet Boys video, "Everybody (Backstreet's Back)".

Although Maran has already had an impressive modeling career at the tender age of 20, she is still down to earth. Not only does she "look at life as an adventure", but she also enjoys learning about different people, cultures and countries. When not working, Maran makes time for her favorite pastimes: reading, hiking, traveling, and spending time with her family and friends.

With such a large number of young girls being approached by modeling scouts, she advises young aspiring models to finish high school, since there is always time for modeling after graduation. She also suggests to keep an open mind, not to take life so seriously and be deceived -- modeling is not as glamorous as it seems! It may not be glamorous, but with Maran's natural beauty, she makes modeling seem like second nature, despite the fact that she is only 5'7" tall(below the standard for female models).

Maran hopes to continue modeling for a few more years and eventually try her hand at acting.

Standing on the shoulders of this giant

Posted by Alan Eustace, VP of Engineering

The Presidential Medal of Freedom is the highest civilian award given in the United States, and our own Vint Cerf has been recognized with this honor. He and Robert Kahn will be recognized in a White House ceremony next Wednesday.

Together, Vint and Bob designed the architecture and protocols 30+ years ago that are used today to implement and operate the Internet. The White House statement puts it succinctly: "Dr. Cerf and Dr. Kahn have been at the forefront of a digital revolution that has transformed global commerce, communication, and entertainment."

Vint and Bob join an impressive list of winners, including Alan Greenspan, Muhammad Ali, Aretha Franklin, Frank Robinson and Paul Rusesabagina. The official release is here.

We couldn't be more pleased for this recognition Vint is receiving on behalf of the vast Internet community that has realized the aspirations that he and Bob had so long ago.

Desktop grows up

Posted by Satish Sampath, Google Desktop Team

We always get a bit misty-eyed when a youngster graduates, so today we're dabbing back a few tears for Google Desktop, which leaves beta status behind with several powerful new features under its belt.

Fans of Google Maps will want to check out Sidebar's new maps panel, which lets you do all the usual cool maps stuff -- local business info, directions, sightseeing -- plus a new one: finding new locations relevant to the web pages and emails you're reading and showing them in your maps panel.

Like this:
Geeks, meanwhile, are invited to pore over our script support for writing plug-ins, which makes it far easier to create home-brewed Sidebar panels. And Sidebar has a bunch of new third- party panels, most notably GDTunes, which cycles through your iTunes collection (and even shows album covers).

Finally, let me invite developers and anyone else who's interested to check out our new Google Desktop blog for the latest news and info.

We've worked hard raising Desktop over the past two years. It's great to see it growing up so nicely.

Preserving public domain books

Posted by Adam Mathes, Associate Product Manager

The world's libraries are a tremendous source of knowledge, much of which has never been available online. One of our goals for Google Print is to change that, and today we've taken an exciting step toward meeting it: making available a number of public domain books that were never subject to copyright or whose copyright has expired. We can show every page because these books are in the public domain. (For books not in the public domain we only show small snippets of the work unless the publisher or copyright holder has given us permission to show more.)



Our partner libraries –- the University of Michigan, Stanford, Harvard, the New York Public Library, and Oxford –- have preserved and nurtured these books through decades of wear and tear, and we're excited to play a part in ensuring that they, and the knowledge they contain, will be more accessible than ever for decades to come.

Every page of these books is fully available online, so you can study, for instance, an illustrated version of Henry James' Daisy Miller (the opening illustration on page one is pictured here) from Harvard's Henry James collection, or read how Private Joseph Taylor got his medal of honor in style, in The Seventh Regiment Rhode Island Volunteers in the Civil War, 1862-1865, from the University of Michigan.

And since every word is searchable, as you are browsing The Wealth and Biography of the Wealthy Citizens of the City of New York -- from the New York Public Library's collection -- you can find that there were more grocers than bankers listed in 1855.

From Stanford's collection, there are government documents detailing what the Fiftieth U.S. Congress spent money on in 1888, or the results of investigations into the fur-seal and other fisheries in Alaska.

See for yourself what some of these libraries have -- using the date operator, and searching for the phrase [steam engine], you'll find different results in books no longer under copyright in the U.S. and books in the public domain internationally. And all that you can find today is still just a small taste -- call it part 1 -- of what you'll be able to find tomorrow, as Google Print helps users discover, search and access the world's rich literary history in ways that were previously impossible.

p.s. If you're interested in other projects that make public domain books available, check out the Million Book Project's The Universal Library in the U.S. and in China, and their Digital Library of India as well as Project Gutenberg's public domain catalog of books.

Updated with p.s.