Instant gratification - your way

Posted by Peiling Yao, Google Mobile Team

In the movie Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, do you remember Veruca Salt, the girl who kept screaming, "I want it NOW, daddy!" Well, that's pretty much how I feel about searching the web on my mobile phone. It takes longer for pages to load, and it's not easy entering text in the first place - so I want the answer NOW, Google!

For all you Verucas out there, we engineers have been working on three new Google search features for mobile phones. Starting today, if you type [movies] or [weather] and a location, or enter a stock ticker symbol, we'll show, predictably enough, movie showtimes, weather forecasts, or live stock quotes above the Google web search results that display on your phone.

Talk about instant gratification - and the best part? No golden tickets required.

Powered by Google

Posted by Shaluinn Fullove for the "Powered" Team

This past weekend 10 Googlers competed at Hood to Coast - the largest relay race in the world - where more than 1,000 teams start at the top of Mt. Hood (11,249 feet) and race 200 miles to the coast of Oregon. This was our rookie year, and our team, "Powered by Google," included Nathan Stoll, Bismarck Lepe, David King, Katie Hotchkiss, Sean Knapp, Michaela Prescott, Natalie Criou, Dan Brown, Tyrona Heath, and me.

Armed with a flashlight and decked out in a reflective vest, Nathan started us off at 7:45 Friday night with a 6-mile run down the face of the mountain. The runners on deck hopped on Van #1 to cheer him on and meet him at the next exchange. The runners who weren't on call until the second stage headed to the nearest Best Western Pony Soldier Inn for some spaghetti and shut-eye.

At the sixth leg exchange Sean passed the baton to Michaela and the race continued through the midnight hour while our starters headed back to the Pony Soldier for a 60-minute power nap. After refueling on Red Bull, coffee, power gels, and turkey sandwiches from a nearby gas station mini-mart, we caught up with Van #2 as the sun rose over Portland. From there, through the dusty back roads and increasing temperatures, we continued passing the baton in 4-8 mile intervals.



It all went smoothly until we met an 18-minute logistical error at exchange 24 (read: we lost Van #2) and then had a flat tire at exchange 29. But we rebounded with solid performances in the final legs, making up much lost ground. Finally, cloaked in a Google jersey, our anchor leg, Sean, crossed the finish line in 22 hours, 19 minutes, and 17 seconds.

In the time it took us to reach the coast, we had each run an average of 20 miles at 6:48/mile. We captured a third place finish in the "corporate mixed" division, and a top 50 finish overall, out of 1,063 teams.



Not bad for a bunch of first-timers. Just wait until next year: we won't be rookies anymore.

Small is beautiful

Posted by Alan Strohm, Google Mobile team

Back in June, we introduced Google Sitemaps, a beta program that lets webmasters inform Google quickly about new or updated web pages, and boost Google index coverage of their web pages.

The thing is, working on the Google Mobile team, you learn that desktop computers and mobile phones aren't created equal. (For one, your desktop won't fit in your front pocket.) At first, the Google Sitemaps program didn't support web pages designed to fit the smaller screens of mobile phones.

We've fixed that. Starting today, webmasters of sites of all sizes can submit their mobile website URLs to Google Mobile Sitemaps, an extension of the Google Sitemaps program. And just as cool, mobile phone users can search through these, and other mobile-friendly websites, using Google Search for the Mobile Web. Here's to the little guy (or device, rather)!

Sharapova's new love?

The professional tennis circuit is abuzz with reports of a love match between women's world No.1 Maria Sharapova and US Open men's winner Andy Roddick.

But Roddick, 22, ranked fourth in the world and renowned as having hit the fastest serve ever timed, said their friendship was platonic when he made an unexpected appearance at a promotion for a new fragrance endorsed by the Russian blonde with the shrill on-court cry.

Sharapova, 18, is the highest-paid female athlete in the world with annual earnings of $25 million, only 15 per cent of which comes from tournament prizemoney.

Sources close to the couple claim the rumour to be true, the New York Post reported.

"They are together," one close source said.

Maria, 18, who was last week linked to Maroon 5 singer Adam Levine, has jokingly denied seeing Roddick.

"I'm 'known' to be dating three guys. I guess I'm just a cheater.

"What can I say?" she joked.

Sharapova will lose her No.1 ranking this week to Lindsay Davenport, who won the pre-US Open Pilot Pen tournament in New Haven, Connecticut.

"Sign up for Gmail"

Posted by Keith Coleman, Gmail Product Manager

It's pretty exciting to see those words on the Gmail homepage. For the last 16 months, a lot of people have been asking us how they can sign up for Gmail, and today we're happy to be able to say, "Just go to gmail.com." From there, you can get an invitation code sent to your mobile phone, and with this code, you can create a Gmail account. Once you have Gmail, you can try out our brand new IM and voice service, Google Talk.

Why use mobile phones? It's a way to help us verify that an account is being created by a real person, and that one person isn't creating thousands of accounts. We want to keep our system as spam-free as possible, and making sure accounts are used by real people is one way to do that.

We're also working on some new mobile features that will make your Google account more useful and secure, such as SMS alerts and password recovery. When you sign up using your mobile phone, you can choose to save your number with your account so you can use these features as soon as they become available.

Right now, sign-ups only work with U.S. mobile phone numbers, but we're eager to support others. With Gmail now available in 29 languages (and counting), we're already working hard to bring you "注册 Gmail 邮箱," "Зарегистрироваться в системе Gmail," "Abra sua conta no Gmail" and many more.

Taiwanese Actress Ruby Lin

A model turned actress, Ruby Lin was born on January 27, 1976 in Taipei. She shot to fame in Asia after starring in the Taiwan television series "Princess Returning Pearl."

Riding the wave of popularity brought by the series, Lin gained the opportunity to appear in a few Hong Kong films, among them Winner Takes All (2000), China Strike Force (2000) and Comic King (2001).

For the most part, she has focused on television, but she will appear later this year in Love Trilogy, a new film co-starring Francis Ng and Anita Yuen. Many directors and co-stars have been impressed by Lin’s ability to cry on cue and memorize her lines perfectly.

The crying, in particular, has come in handy since she graduated from the Qiong Yao (a.k.a the "Queen of Weepy Dramas") School of Acting. Qiong (who authored and produced "Princess Returning Pearl") is the one who gave Lin her big break and, despite rumours of a fallout, Lin continues to appear regularly in Qiong’s productions.

Google gets to talking

Posted by David Bau, Google Talk software engineer

Google has a friendly talk-in-the-hallway kind of culture that I love, but Google engineers seem to be everywhere now, from Bangalore to Tokyo to Dublin to Zurich. I work on a team that's in Mountain View, Kirkland, Pittsburgh, and Philadelphia. We like to talk about the projects we're working on, but a hallway is hard to come by. So we've put together a gadget that keeps us talking, even when we're on different sides of the planet.

It's called Google Talk — a small program that lets you call and IM other Google Talk friends over the Internet for free. We're releasing it in beta today for all Gmail users (once you sign on, you can start inviting any of your friends to try it too).

The sound is great — usually much better than a regular phone — and it's a perfect way to use that computer microphone you never realized you had. My laptop with its built-in mic makes a superb speakerphone. Google Talk also works great with just about any standard mic or headset you can plug in to a computer.

We're already finding that Google Talk is pretty useful, as it's great to be able to see when friends are awake and online in London, Tokyo, or the exotic Kirkland Public Library. And of course it's wonderful to be able to ring friends on a whim, without having to dial all those pesky country codes.

Geeks in particular might notice that the Google Talk service runs on the open XMPP protocol. So even though many people will log on using Google Talk, you can also use iChat, GAIM, Trillian, Adium, Psi, or another one of the many great XMPP clients out there.

There's a reason for that openness. We believe Internet communication networks should openly interoperate, and that they should include IM and voice. The openness of the Google Talk service to XMPP clients is just a start. We like SIP too, and we want to also federate between servers. We've already started working with our friends at EarthLink and Sipphone to federate our respective real-time communications services so all our users can talk to each other for free. If you're interested in federating with us or would like to interoperate in a way that we have not yet implemented, let us know.

Introducing Desktop 2

Posted by Michael Krantz, Google Blog Team

At Google we’re never satisfied. Last fall we released Google Desktop Search, which finds reams of information of all kinds on your computer with Google-fast speed and accuracy. But then our product people got to thinking: what about when you’re feeling kind of lazy? Wouldn’t it be cool if your information could come to you, both from the web and from your own computer?

So today we’re pleased to introduce Google Desktop 2, whose new features include:

-- Sidebar, an intelligent desktop panel that gives you continually updated personalized info like your email, photos, stock prices, weather, RSS and Atom feeds, and so on. All of it is automatically customized for you, and ever-more-precisely tailored to your own interests based on how you use your computer. Think of Sidebar as an information valet who’s really resourceful, conscientious and insightful (and whose salary is zero).

-- Expanded and improved desktop search. If it’s on your hard drive and we can’t find it, you might want to ask yourself whether you really need it - and if you do, you might want to download a plug-in, or build one yourself.

-- Quick Find, which lets you search your hard drive to find files and launch applications as fast as you can type.

-- Outlook search and integration. If you’re an Outlook user, this is probably your dream come true.

You can learn more about Desktop 2 here. Enjoy.

The machines do the translating

Posted by Franz Och, Research Scientist

This year, Google entered the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Machine Translation evaluation, an event that has taken place annually since 2001 to support research in this area and to improve the state of the art. Participants included university labs, industrial labs, government labs and commercial machine translation companies from all over the world.

Our approach was to use statistical translation models learned from parallel text, that is, sets of documents and their translations. The system learns a model automatically from the parallel data. This approach differs from the rule-based approach used by many existing commercial machine translation companies which is based on large sets of handwritten translation rules.

We're very pleased with the results of this evaluation. Our computing infrastructure allows us to do a lot of experiments and work with huge data sets very easily.

The linguasphere at large

Posted by Enrique Muñoz Torres, International Product Manager

Since part of our mission is making the world's information universally accessible and useful, we strive to offer our services in as many languages as we can.

Today we're happy to announce the launch of Google in Cambodian, Corsican, Kazakh, Lingala, Pashto, Quechua, Shona, Tajik, Tatar, Tonga, and Yoruba. This launch raises the count of Google languages to 116.

We would like to extend our thanks to the volunteers who have translated Google into these languages. If you can't find it yet in your own lingua franca (please note: we do already offer Swedish Chef, Hacker, and Klingon) consider becoming a volunteer translator through the Google in Your Language program.

That's so random

Posted by Matthew Vosburgh, Google Video Software Engineer

The cool thing about Google Video is that anyone, anywhere can send us their videos, and then everyone in the world can see them. Summer intern Nestor Hernandez wanted to make sure every video had a chance to be seen, so he came up with a page that displays a grid of random video links. We all liked this idea so much (if it wasn't for this new feature, for instance, I never might have found my current favorite) that along with launching a new random video page, we also now have 3 random video links right on the Google Video front page. Every time you refresh either page you'll see different links, so enjoy, and visit us often.

Brazilian Model Gisele Bundchen

Born July 20th, 1980, in Horizontina, Rio Grande de Sul, Brazil. Gisele is a supermodel beauty. Gisele, raised in Horizontina, a small town of less then 20,000 people located in the southern part of Brazil. With six daughters in the family, her five other sisters are all natural phenomenons. Raquel, Graziela, Gabriela, Patricia, and Rafaela are all aspiring models.

As a school girl, she was taunted with the nickname Olive Oil, the waif thin girl friend of Popeye the Sailor in cartoons. Her career as a model started when Gisele was on a school trip to Sao Paulo in 1995 when she was only 15 years old. While grabbing a Big Mac in a shopping mall, she was seen by a modeling agent who approached her and asked if she had any interest in becoming a model. Despite her father's lack of approval of the career choice, he allowed her to move to Sao Paulo and she entered the Elite Look Modeling Competition, and her career took off.

Gisele has modeled for all the major fashion houses such as Ralph Lauren, Versace, Valentino and Chloe. She also has appeared on several magazine covers such as Vogue, Marie Claire, Harper's Bazaar and Rolling Stone.

Gisele has recently signed a multimillion-dollar contract with North American lingerie firm, Victoria's Secret. As a result, the Brazilian beauty will appear in several of their lingerie, beauty and hosiery campaigns for television and print, as well as in their point-of-sale materials. According to rumors that circulated amongst the fashion crowd during New York Fashion Week, Gisele will receive a cool 20 million US dollars for the job.

Gisele currently lives in Los Angeles, an apartment in New York and a house out in the country in up-state New York. She has had her belly-button pierced and has a tattoo of a star drawn on the inside of her left wrist. It is nice to see that Gisele, albeit a young, rich and famous model, still maintains her naturalness and a down-to-earth personality.

Courts signal that Google's keyword policy is lawful

Posted by David Drummond, VP and General Counsel

There have been a few erroneous reports suggesting that a judge ruled against Google in a case involving GEICO. It's actually the reverse of that, so we thought we'd clarify a few things about that decision.

Last December, the judge in the case ruled decisively in our favor on the issue of keywords. In her oral ruling, she stated that GEICO had failed to prove that using "GEICO" as a keyword to trigger ads was likely to confuse consumers. Then, earlier this month, she issued a written ruling explaining the reasoning behind the December ruling.

In her written ruling, she stated that GEICO's own evidence "refutes the allegation that the use of the trademark as a keyword, without more, causes a likelihood of confusion." That is a clear signal that Google's policy on trademarks and keywords is lawful.

What has generated the confusion is another part of the ruling, of little significance to Google, that relates to the use of "GEICO" in ad text. Google already has a policy that prohibits advertisers from using someone else's trademark in their ad text when the trademark owner objects. Our policy on that is here.

It's been our longstanding policy -- dating back to well before GEICO filed its lawsuit against us -- to block use of a trademark in ad text when the trademark owner objects. GEICO said that there were instances when their trademark appeared in competitors' ads even after GEICO objected. In her December oral ruling, the judge called this a "narrow issue," and said that Google and GEICO should "see whether or not there can be a resolution of what is left in the case." In the recent written decision, she reiterated these points, and explained that while she thought that the ads with "GEICO" in the ad text were confusing, she hadn't decided whether Google was liable for that.

Judge Brinkema's decision is consistent with several other court opinions. A court in Austria recently ruled in our favor, concluding that the use of a trademark to trigger ads isn't likely to confuse consumers. A German court has also ruled in our favor on this issue. And in a case not involving Google, a federal appeals court in the United States recently reached the same result in a keyword-triggered ad case.

We're very pleased with Judge Brinkema's decision, which tracks our AdWords trademark policy. The decision is a victory for consumers.

Finally, even though we believe our current policy strikes a good balance between advertisers, users and trademark owners, don't be surprised if our policy evolves over time. We believe it is possible for an advertiser to create an ad that uses a trademark in a legal and non-confusing way - after all that is what comparative advertising is all about.

Attention, Froogle shoppers...

Posted by Josh Redstone, Software Engineer

I'm excited to tell you about the enhanced version of Froogle Mobile, a handy service for checking online prices from your cellphone. Say you're in a store eyeing that new BeDazzler that you've always wanted. A quick price check via Froogle Mobile, and you can rest assured that you're getting this wardrobe staple at a fine price. You can also sort queries by price, and Froogle Mobile is now available to our friends in the U.K. too.

This was posted from Microsoft Word

Posted by Jason Shellen, Product Manager

Last July, a few of us visited the Democratic National Convention to see political bloggers in action. Many were using Microsoft Word to post their reports. It was a multi-step process that didn't look like fun, but for citizen journalists, punctuation, spelling and grammar are important. That got the Blogger team thinking about how to help Word users to become bloggers.

So just now I fired up Microsoft Word, wrote this, hit 'Publish' on the brand new Blogger for Word toolbar and voila - you're reading it. Which means there's really no excuse, blogwise, if you prefer to finely craft your posts over time. Use Blogger for Word as a way to back up your document drafts with the 'Save as Draft' button or work on posts while you are offline and post them later. Hope you enjoy this new add-in.

Sassy Girl Jeon Ji-Hyun

Born on October 30, 1981, Jeon Ji-hyun first became well-known as a commercial model and as a TV actress. Although she made her film debut in the little-watched White Valentine in 1999, it was not until later in the year when she was featured in an advertisement for an audio system that she became a popular sensation. The dancing and attitude expressed in the ad made her into an icon for Koreans in their late teens and early twenties.

After continuing her TV and modelling career, Jeon made her first well-publicized film appearance in late 2000 with Il Mare. A handsomely-shot melodrama set on Kanghwa Island, the film did respectably well at the box office (despite opening on the same day as JSA) and solidified her status as a star.

Jeon's breakout film was comedy My Sassy Girl, which became a huge hit both in Korea and throughout Asia with its tale of a gullible college student and his slightly unhinged girlfriend. The film spent two weeks at #1 in Hong Kong, and turned her into Korea's most recognizable star in the Chinese-language market. Two years then passed before she appeared in her next film, an "occult thriller" titled The Uninvited which wowed critics but failed to catch on with viewers. Throughout this time she was a constant presence in TV ads and on billboards in Korea and also in other Asian countries.

2004 saw her return to the big screen in another film by Kwak Jae-yong, the director of My Sassy Girl. Windstruck cast her in the role of a policewoman, but many viewers felt it was too similar to My Sassy Girl. There were also signs that her popularity had started to suffer because of overexposure in advertisements. Nonetheless, Windstruck became the best-performing film ever in Japan, where My Sassy Girl was not as well known.

Jeon's next project Daisy teams her with Jung Woo-sung (who frequently appears together with her in advertisements), and has drawn attention for its 100% location shooting in the Netherlands, and for using the Hong Kong director Andrew Lau (Infernal Affairs). Kwak Jae-yong (My Sassy Girl) wrote the screenplay.

We get letters …

Posted by Karen Wickre, Google Blog team

The Google mailbag is filled with stories like this one, demonstrating the reach of Google across countries and between people. Occasionally we'll feature such a story here and hope you enjoy reading them. If you have a noteworthy tale about how you've used Google, write to testimonial@google.com.

Laura Escobosa is the executive director of Operation Rainbow, an all-volunteer organization which organizes medical missions to poor countries for American doctors and nurses specializing in orthopedic and plastic surgery. The people on these missions are affiliated with Stanford University's Lucile Packard Children's Hospital, and one regular stop for them has been Esteli, Nicaragua. Among those mentioning his Operation Rainbow experience is Dr. Elliot Krane, who cites it on his CV.

Just two weeks ago, this year's team was preparing for its annual trip to Esteli. At the same time, a quite unrelated journey was underway. A young American woman, Alice Orman, was visiting Esteli en route to her new year-long role as an English teacher in Honduras. While in Esteli, she had an accident that led to a leg break in two places. Though local doctors wanted to help, they lacked good facilities or equipment for setting a complicated break properly.

Someone at the hospital remembered the Stanford doctors. The staff knew they were coming soon, but who, and when? Alice called her parents in Nashville for help. They went to Google and typed in [Esteli Stanford] and up came Dr. Krane's reference. They emailed him late that night, and by morning he had replied from his office in Palo Alto. He told them about Dr. Larry Rinsky, an orthopedic surgeon who was packing his bags right then for Esteli. With a copy of Dr. Krane's email reply in hand, Dr. Rinsky called Alice's parents and assured them he would see Alice, and that the team would do what it could for her.

So Alice rested and waited another day, hoping that the arriving team would treat her in addition to their Nicaraguan patients. Ms Escobosa says the team of Stanford doctors and nurses treated her right away, gave her crutches and some TLC too. Within a short time she was able to continue on to Honduras for her year of teaching. And she's there now.

Back in Nashville, Scott and Mindy Orman were very relieved: "When we received the call from Alice," writes Mindy, "we were very worried and didn't know how we could help, being so far away. But the miraculous timing of the Stanford doctors' annual mission trip to Esteli, and the Google search that led us to them, assured us that Alice would be in good hands. We are so thankful for all the prayers and encouragement of so many folks and the excellent care she received from the Stanford team."

Ms. Escobosa wrote us to marvel at the coincidences that led to this happy ending. We're glad we could be part of it.

Making books easier to find

Posted by Adam M. Smith, Google Print Product Manager
(Updated 8/12/05, 1:31 p.m. PDT*)

In October 2004 we announced a program called Google Print, a way for publishers to make their books discoverable by the millions of people who search on Google every day. Shortly thereafter, we added a complementary program to help find all books more easily by partnering with libraries to index their collections too. The goal of Google Print is ambitious: to make the full text of all the world's books searchable by anyone. These books are hard to find now, and for most of them, no full-text search exists. We think that making books easier to find will have a positive impact on the world, and we welcome the challenge.

As with many ambitious ideas, Google Print has sparked a healthy amount of discussion. And we've been listening. Over the last few months, we’ve been talking with numerous publishers, publishing industry organizations and authors about our Google Print Publisher Program and Google Print Library Project. Today I’d like to mention two new features that reflect these discussions and which we feel will considerably improve both programs.

If you’re in the Publisher Program (or you decide to join it), you can now give us a list of the books that, if we scan them at a library, you’d like to have added immediately to your account. This way you can have your books in Google Print, which will put them into Google.com search results, direct potential buyers to your website, provide ongoing reports about user interest in your books, and your books will also earn revenue from contextual advertising – even if they are out of print.

We think most publishers and authors will choose to participate in the publisher program in order to introduce their work to countless readers around the world. But we know that not everyone agrees, and we want to do our best to respect their views too. So now, any and all copyright holders – both Google Print partners and non-partners – can tell us which books they’d prefer that we not scan if we find them in a library. To allow plenty of time to review these new options, we won’t scan any in-copyright books from now until this November.

We're going to continue talking about Google Print with our partners and the publishing industry. These discussions have been crucial in helping to build a program that benefits the industry and, most important, the millions of users who'll be able to discover new books. Stay tuned.

*Update: People have been asking us how we came to this new policy for the Google Print Library Project. We consulted with a variety of constituencies and ultimately decided that this new approach would best balance the rights and needs of users and publishers while remaining consistent with our web search policy. Google automatically indexes content across the web. Most web publishers find this service convenient and useful, but we gladly offer those who prefer that we not index their site a way of telling us not to do so via a robots.txt file. Similarly, the Library Project aims to make it convenient and useful for publishers to get their books into Google Print, but those publishers who don't want to take advantage of this service can now simply tell us which books they'd like us to exclude.

NFL Ambassador/ Singer Beni Arashiro

If you are at Tokyo Dome on Aug 6 for the NFL game between the Atlanta Falcons and the Indianapolis Colts, you'll see 19-year-old Beni Arashiro singing the national anthems of the United States and Japan before the game and taking part in a special performance at half-time.

In just 14 months, Arashiro has gone from unknown student to recording artist (with five singles), TV ad girl for Kose cosmetics and Glico confectionery and ambassador for the NFL in Tokyo.

"When I was a little girl, I never dreamed I would be a singer or even in showbiz," says Arashiro who speaks fluent English. "Actually, I wanted to be in the FBI, or I thought I'd become a lawyer. But I always liked music, though. I have played the piano since I was six."

Born in Okinawa to an American father and Japanese mother, Arashiro moved back and forth between Japan and California. She completed her high school education in Kanagawa and is currently studying political science at Sophia University.

Her debut into the Japanese showbiz world came two years ago when her mother encouraged her to enter the Bishojo Club (a nationwide contest whose winners go into the modeling and celebrity worlds).

"Being a 'hafu,' I didn't think I'd do any good, but I thought it would be fun to give it a try," she recalls. To her surprise and delight, she was chosen.

Arashiro, whom everyone calls Beni-chan, says she has no problem with the term "hafu." "I remember some people used to call me a double, but I had no idea what they were talking about. I have both cultures in me and am proud of both. I guess I am more Americanized, though. My English language skills are stronger and I prefer English interviews because I can express myself better."

That's one of the reasons the NFL asked her to be its ambassador in Tokyo. She recently went to the States to promote the Tokyo Bowl and did some interviews on TV there. Performing in front of the Tokyo Dome crowd will be her biggest stage to date. "I love American football and really want to see the game but I know that up until half-time, I'm going to be so nervous," she says.

For the near future, Arashiro plans to concentrate on her singing career. All five of her singles so far have been in Japanese. "I haven't done a full CD of English songs yet. I am beginning to write my own lyrics. I'm better at doing that in English than Japanese. For now, I am still trying to find my own style."

She is also serious about finishing her studies. "When I am not at work, I study. I just finished exams last week. My schedule can get really hectic. Some days at the studio, as soon as I am done recording, I take out my laptop and do assignments."

On the rare days when she doesn't have to work, Arashiro likes soccer, hip hop dancing, shopping, watching movies and, last but not least, she is a big Harry Potter fan. "Of course, I got the sixth book last week, but I'm still on the 4th one. I have to catch up this summer."

It's a Mini world

Posted by Kevin Gough, Google Mini Marketing Manager

Everyone else is having fun with Google Maps; why not your friendly neighborhood Google Mini team? Here's our ever-expanding map of satisfied customers who are giving our website and intranet search appliance rave reviews.

P.S. Don't forget to drag your way over to Europe.

Fill in the blanks

Posted by Hiyan Alshawi, Research Scientist

Sometimes one wants to use a search engine to find a very specific piece of information rather than to learn about a topic. If search engines were truly intelligent, you could just pose a question the same way you would ask a person. An alternative is to get the search engine to 'fill in the blank.' So instead of asking [who invented the parachute?], you can enter the query [the parachute was invented by *]. (The blank, or wildcard, search is marked by * - an asterisk.)

There is so much text on the web that this method often works well, but to make it more effective, we've improved the way results are found in response to queries containing such blanks. This includes allowing softer pattern matching, if necessary, and promoting results in which the blank filler is relatively more frequent in the context of the query.

One nice thing about this approach to answering questions is that the same mechanism can be used in all languages, so the improved blank filling will work on google.com in your favorite language. It can also be used for exploratory queries rather than questions as such: try something like [Glasgow is the * capital of Europe].

Breaking story: Google News Feeds

Posted by Vijay Boyapati, Software Engineer

For some time now, the Google News team has noticed a steady uptick in feature requests for feed support. We're happy to announce that starting today you'll be able to get Google News results in two feed flavors, Atom and RSS. You can use either format in your favorite feed reader. And since feed reading can be addictive, don't forget to feed yourself after feeding your reader.

HK Cute Cookie Stephy Tang Lai Yun

One of the top entertainers in Hong Kong today is Stephy Tang. The 22 year-old made her debut as part of the ensemble group Cookies as a "rival" to their pop counterparts Twins.

After successfully releasing a CD, Cookies made their film debut in 2002 in Nine Girls and a Ghost. Stephy was one of the 9 girls while Edison Chen played the ghost.

In 2003, Stephy got her first lead role as Cherie in a new installment of the Feel 100% film series, costarring alongside fellow Cookies Miki Yeung and Theresa Fu.

In mid-2003, Cookies disbanded but a new group called Mini-Cookies formed. Stephy became one of the Mini-Cookies. Stephy recently appeared in the comedy Dragon Loaded 2003, the showcase for Ronald Cheng.

Her interest includes playing tennis, singing and dancing.

Guest Bloggers: those Freakonomics Guys

Posted by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner

We didn't know quite what to expect at Google during our visit last week. A few months ago we'd been asked to give some kind of presentation to an undetermined number of Google employees. Were we interested? Sure, we said. This was still many weeks ago. When something is that far away, you'll generally agree to it without much thought.

Because we arrived at Google late -- we were coming from a meeting with some people who may want to turn Freakonomics into a board game (!) — our tour was cut a little short. Still, we did manage to see:

• Your Google-logo-colored pylons at the extremely low-key "security" post.
• Your very user-friendly name-tag-generating/sign-in computer
• Your very, very fancy toilets.
• Your rack of primordial servers with the thin layers of cork that used to make the fire department so nervous.
• Your roaming dogs, one friendlier than the next.
• Your scrolling query screens: Hillary Duff … pits puppies … Yenifer Lopez … Spanish Dictionary (we were a bit disappointed not to see a Freakonomics, but maybe it got caught in your filter; people sometimes give it some pretty deviant spellings.)
• Your quartz rug, robust cacti, fancy yurts, and ecologically sound staircase in the Africa building.

Then it was time for our "presentation." We left Africa and our host, Google product manager Hunter Walk, walked us over to the room where we were speaking...

Whomp! It wasn’t some little room, with a conference table and a couple dozen people, as we'd imagined. It was a big, big room, rows and rows of chairs, all of them filled with Googlers, and many, many more Googlers sitting on the floor and standing in the back and – well, not exactly hanging from the rafters but it felt like it. The walls were black, the stage lights white-hot, the room alive with chatter. This wasn’t a presentation; this was a presentation. It was a Sally Field moment: They like us! They really like us! (We realize, of course, that the average Googler is far too young to catch this reference. Don't worry; it's not very funny anyway.) As we picked our way through the floor-sitting Googlers, it felt like we should have been carrying a couple of Telecasters; it was likely the closest that either of us will ever get to having a rock-star moment (in truth, Dubner was a minor-league rock star, but that was in the late 80s, so it doesn't really count).

Google had passed around a few hundred copies of Freakonomics (we immediately wondered if the order would be counted as a bulk sale, and therefore underweighted on the N.Y. Times best-seller list), so now, looking across the long rows of chairs, you could see one Googler after the next with the open book in his/her lap, as if preparing to hear a speech from Chairman Mao. It was, well, freaky. A bit like happening upon your own funeral.

There was one podium and one microphone, so we decided to do a tag-team talk, discussing the book (e.g., why crack dealers still live with their moms) and telling a few stories based on research that’s happened since the book (e.g., monkey prostitution at Yale). We seemed to do okay, based on the fact that everyone laughed a lot. The biggest laugh came when Levitt mentioned that we spoke at Yahoo! a day earlier and got a much smaller crowd. That was true; Google’s turnout was about double Yahoo!'s. On the other hand, that means Google may have lost twice the productivity (unless you think that our talk may have somehow increased productivity). The best question of the day was, "What would you do with our data if we could give it to you?" We've thought about that quite a bit ever since; we'll keep you posted.

After our talk, we spent a few minutes hanging around with miscellaneous Googlers. This was the most impressive slice of the day; not only were they all smart and inquisitive and friendly, but they were so damn happy. For instance, there's surely no company in the world where so many employees wear t-shirts with their company logo, which we took to be a sign of deep pride (or perhaps simply a deep discount).

One person we talked with after our presentation was actually an old friend of Dubner's, a writer named Anya Kamenetz who is the fiancee of a Google employee. Dubner hadn't seen her in a couple of years and had no idea she was even in California. Even stranger, Levitt had seen her on PBS not long ago, just as the two of us were starting to do TV appearances, and called up Dubner to say, I just saw this young woman named Anya on TV, and she was so good and natural at it that it made me realize that that’s how we should try to be on TV. The reason Levitt remembered her name is that Dubner's daughter is also named Anya, a name he (Dubner) chose in some part because Anya Kamenetz was such a good name model. So here, a few thousand miles and a few months away, all these strange random elements got tied up in a neat bow, on the Google campus. Somehow it doesn’t seem as if it could have happened anywhere else.

Keyword: chefs

Posted by Susan Wojcicki, VP, Product Management (and long-time seeker of Google chefs)

One of the most fantastic perks at Google is free meals for employees. I've always loved having fresh food available, and today that includes breakfast, lunch and dinner. As our Mountain View HQ grows, so does the need for people who know how to make good food, and plenty of it.

The search is now on for not one, but two, executive chefs to fuel Googlers. We already serve umpteen meals a day (not including snacks). We go through 55 gallons of olive oil a week. At our breakfast bar, the chefs turn out two fresh smoothies, or one custom omelet, each minute.

This is why we're looking for industrial-strength chefs who know how to cook with fresh and organic ingredients. People who will thrive on the accolades - and demands - of repeat customers who come to eat day in and day out.

There's a cook-off for the finalists - a team of Googlers will taste their dishes and vote for their favorites. And then we'll announce the winners with great fanfare. Till we do, check back here for updates, menus and a recipe or two.

Just to give you an idea of what our chefs turn out, here's the daily menu for one (admittedly the largest) of our 5 cafes.

SALADS
Ahi Tuna & Avocado Poke
Fresh line caught Ahi tuna diced with organic avocados and minced ginger, habanero chilies, cilantro, green onions and sesame seeds, tossed with a fresh dressing of orange juice, rice vinegar, tamari, sesame oil, lime juice, tangerine oil, sambal oeleck and garnished with black and white sesame seeds.

Calypso Rice Salad
Perfectly steamed wild rice with Valencia orange segments, currants, diced red bell peppers, cilantro, green and red onions, mint, coriander and cayenne, tossed with orange juice and extra virgin olive oil.

Tuna Melt Salad
Al dente elbow macaroni tossed with mayonnaise, cider vinegar, Dijon mustard and lemon juice, then topped with tuna salad, cheddar cheese and green onions.

VEGHEADS
Eggplant, Tomato & Onion Skewers
Organic eggplant, tomatoes and onions, skewered, baked, and topped with cilantro chutney and yogurt sauce.

Stir-fried Cauliflower
Organic cauliflower stir-fried with mustard seeds, turmeric, diced tomatoes and red onions.

Greek Spinach Salad
Organic baby spinach, Greek feta cheese, roasted tomatoes, red onions, Kalamata olives and toasted pistachio nuts, tossed to order with a dressing of fresh lemon juice, Dijon mustard, extra virgin olive oil, oregano and minced garlic.

CHARLIE’S GRILL
Pork Loin Steak
Berkshire Farms pork loin brined in marjoram, paprika, red wine vinegar and brown sugar, then seared to perfection. Served with a roasted red pepper sauce.

Eggplant Ratatouille
Organic eggplant roasted with Roma tomatoes, zucchini, mushrooms, white onions, bell peppers, garlic, basil, parsley, extra virgin olive oil and a splash of red wine.

Creamy Mashed Potatoes
Organic russet potatoes mashed with buttermilk, cream and butter.

BACK TO ALBUQUERQUE
Agua Fresca… Mora
Blackberry infused water.

Pollo en Huerto
Free range chicken with garden vegetables: organic zucchini, onions, fresh corn off the cob, tomatoes, green, red and yellow bell peppers, carrots, jalapeños, cilantro, garlic and oregano.

Vegetarian Tamale Casserole
A casserole of organic zucchini, carrots, onions, green and yellow bell peppers, corn off the cob, green peas and diced tomatoes, with chili powder, oregano, cumin and garlic.

Snap Peas
Organic snap peas sautéed with garlic and extra virgin olive oil.

EAST MEETS WEST

Seared Day Boat Scallops in Green Coconut Curry Sauce
Day Boat scallops seared to perfection and tossed in green curry coconut. Topped with a red bell pepper coulis and daikon sprouts.

Pad Thai Noodles
Pad Thai noodles stir-fried with yellow and red bell peppers, garlic, ginger, shiitake mushrooms, cilantro and Thai basil.

Broccoli, Cauliflower & Haricot Verts
Stir-fry of organic broccoli, cauliflower and haricot verts with garlic, ginger and Dave’s special brown sauce.

Jasmine Rice
Jasmine-scented rice steamed to perfection.

AL FORNO ROMANO
Roasted Pork Loin
Berkshire Farms pork loin with mozzarella and bell pepper sauce.

Roma & Green Onion
Organic Roma tomatoes, green onions, Gruyère and fontina cream.

I PIADINI
Arugula with Dried Apricots
Organic arugula with dried apricots, shaved Parmesan cheese, tossed with extra virgin olive oil and vinegar.

IL SECONDO PIATTO
Herb Roasted Chicken
Free range chicken legs and thighs roasted to perfection with extra virgin olive oil, fresh herbs and herb salt.

Creamy Tomato Polenta
A lush blend of polenta, slow roasted tomatoes, cream and butter.

Sautéed Wild Mushrooms
Organic shiitake, cremini, button and oyster mushrooms sautéed in garlic and herb salt.

Capelin Pesto
Toasted pine nuts, basil, Parmesan cheese, garlic and herb salt.

SOUPS
Spinach Lentil Dahl
Tropical Shrimp Bisque
Wild Rice & Pork
Sweet Onion with Peas (chilled)

DESSERTS
Red Velvet Cake with Bright White Frosting
Hazelnut Shortcakes with Plum Compote
Chocolate Coconut Cheesecake
Creamy Lemon Macadamia Nut Cookies
Cherry Chocolate Chip Oatmeal Cookies

Jay Chou's girlfriend Patty Hou

Early this year, pictures of popular Taiwanese singer Jay Chow (Initial D) and TV host Patty Hou, 27, behaving like a couple in Tokyo surfaced in Taiwan tabloids and with that, throwing Jay's denials that they are 'just friends' right out the window.

The pictures by Hong Kong's Sudden Weekly show the couple smiling and strolling, with Jay's arm around Patty's shoulder, holding her hand and whispering in her ear. News of their sighting in Tokyo first surfaced when tourists spotted them at the hip shopping district of Daikanyama.

Patty's manager spoke up. She had earlier told reporters that Patty 'bumped' into Jay by chance in Tokyo, and they didn't even have time for coffee... which was a lie. She claimed she had lied to protect Patty's privacy, and she hoped that fans would not blame Patty.

Jay met Patty last year on E-News@Asia, the daily entertainment news programme she hosts on Asia Plus cable channel. Following that, Patty showed up at his concert in Taipei last October, and the couple first shared the stage during a tsunami charity concert held in Taiwan. Patty sang, while Jay tickled the ivories.

The Jay-Patty pairing has come as a surprise to many because of the couple's seeming incompatibile. She graduated from University Of Southern California with a degree in communications and clinical psychology, while he completed only high school. Furthermore, she is poised, eloquent and hails from a well-to-do family, while he is shy, reticent and is a middle-class kid made good.

No wonder Patty's mum, Madam Lin Yue-yun, was angry at the news of her daughter's secret Tokyo date, reported by Taiwan's Liberty Times. Her mum said she was not informed of Patty's romantic getaway and that she does not approve of them dating. Jay's family, however, seems more than happy with Jay's choice. His mother and grandmother have both previously praised Patty's sweet TV personality.

Lights, camera, action

Posted by Robert Snedegar, Technical Solutions Engineer

Today marks the launch of Current TV, which will let television viewers (like you, for example) broadcast their own videos to the world. Amidst this content contributed by viewers, Current TV produces segments which use Google Zeitgeist data to highlight trends in what people search for using Google. Ever wonder what the most popular searches are for animals? The answers may surprise you (liger, anyone?) Jointly created by teams at both companies, these Zeitgeist segments are aptly named Google Current.

Congratulations to the Current TV team. We wish them the best of luck in their admirable effort to empower television viewers!