Wednesday, May 18, 2005
Search for the enterprise
Looking for a crucial file you lost somewhere on your computer? At home you’d use Google Desktop Search - and at work, you’d start updating your resume. Not anymore. Check out Google Desktop Search for the Enterprise: fast, secure (and free!) desktop search that you can actually use from 9 to 5.
Tuesday, May 17, 2005
Fashion Model Yu Yamada
Twenty-year-old charismatic fashion model Yu Yamada's career is really taking off. Not only is she a popular magazine cover girl, she is also the campaign girl for the Tokyo Metro and a star in the TBS drama "Yumede Aimasho" (Let's meet in our dreams) that started from April. In it, she is a dental assistant who isn't afraid to play love games using her beauty.
The Okinawan-born Yamada's TV commercial contracts are increasing, too. Besides hawking products for Kanebo, Vodafone and five other major companies, confectionery company Ezaki Glico selected her to pitch its new ice cream. "She is very stylish but down to earth and has a lot of male and female fans. That's why we chose her as our campaign girl," said an Ezaki Glico spokesperson. "Since the ads started appearing, sales of the new ice cream have skyrocketed quickly and it's thanks to Yamada."
According to Tatsuo Sekine of CM Total Research, celebrities who have more than five commercial contracts are rated A. "Yamada is not only popular among adults, she also has a lot of children fans. When she did the ball exercise in the Glico apple yogurt TV commercial, children who saw it mimicked her and it became a sort of children's phenomenon."
Such magnetic power is an important asset for an actress. Yamada's TV commercial guarantee has been estimated at around 30 million yen per product, but that will probably go up to 50 million within a year, said Sekine.
When Yamada was 11 years old, she entered the same Okinawa acting and singing school that singers Namie Amuro and Speed attended. In 1999, she made her singing debut with the group y'z factory. One year later, she was offered modeling work by top fashion magazine Can Cam and was soon walking the red carpet at gala events.
The reason for Yamada's popularity is her perfect proportion, say industry observers. She is 170 centimeters tall, and her vital measurements are B83, W58, H83.
She seems to have inherited much of her good looks from her mother, Mikako Yamada, a 46-year-old former JAL flight attendant and fashion model with 23 years in the business. Mikako also was born in Okinawa. After graduating from high school, she came to Tokyo to study at a flight attendant academy. She won two beauty pageants and was subsequently named Miss Okinawa in the first such pageant held by the prefecture. She married at age 25 and had three children — Yu and two boys.
In the May edition of VoCE, Yu and Mikako appear in a photo spread together. Mikako wears a sleeveless shirt and miniskirt, and more than holds her own against her daughter. She says: "Actually, Yu has a longer career in the magazine industry, so I asked her advice for the photo shoot."
(Translated from Shukan Post)
The Okinawan-born Yamada's TV commercial contracts are increasing, too. Besides hawking products for Kanebo, Vodafone and five other major companies, confectionery company Ezaki Glico selected her to pitch its new ice cream. "She is very stylish but down to earth and has a lot of male and female fans. That's why we chose her as our campaign girl," said an Ezaki Glico spokesperson. "Since the ads started appearing, sales of the new ice cream have skyrocketed quickly and it's thanks to Yamada."
According to Tatsuo Sekine of CM Total Research, celebrities who have more than five commercial contracts are rated A. "Yamada is not only popular among adults, she also has a lot of children fans. When she did the ball exercise in the Glico apple yogurt TV commercial, children who saw it mimicked her and it became a sort of children's phenomenon."
Such magnetic power is an important asset for an actress. Yamada's TV commercial guarantee has been estimated at around 30 million yen per product, but that will probably go up to 50 million within a year, said Sekine.
When Yamada was 11 years old, she entered the same Okinawa acting and singing school that singers Namie Amuro and Speed attended. In 1999, she made her singing debut with the group y'z factory. One year later, she was offered modeling work by top fashion magazine Can Cam and was soon walking the red carpet at gala events.
The reason for Yamada's popularity is her perfect proportion, say industry observers. She is 170 centimeters tall, and her vital measurements are B83, W58, H83.
She seems to have inherited much of her good looks from her mother, Mikako Yamada, a 46-year-old former JAL flight attendant and fashion model with 23 years in the business. Mikako also was born in Okinawa. After graduating from high school, she came to Tokyo to study at a flight attendant academy. She won two beauty pageants and was subsequently named Miss Okinawa in the first such pageant held by the prefecture. She married at age 25 and had three children — Yu and two boys.
In the May edition of VoCE, Yu and Mikako appear in a photo spread together. Mikako wears a sleeveless shirt and miniskirt, and more than holds her own against her daughter. She says: "Actually, Yu has a longer career in the magazine industry, so I asked her advice for the photo shoot."
(Translated from Shukan Post)
A Video Uploader for the rest of us
As a Mac user, my heart sank a little when I first saw the post about the Google Video Upload Program. Clearly, the concept is cool. It was just that all-too-ubiquitous .exe file you must run to upload your videos. Of course I know that something like 90% of the desktop/notebook computers sold today run Windows. But in my circle of friends (admittedly a small one -- I blame the caffeine), almost everyone uses a Mac, and the rest use Linux or some other UNIX-like substance. Anyhow, this Video announcement inevitably led to a lot of flak (again) from my friends about how Google was shipping yet another Windows-only application. "I thought Google has lots of smart developers." "Doesn't Google know how to write platform independent software?" Blah, blah, blah.
But this time, I took it as a personal challenge. I shoot a lot of video, and I edit it on my Mac. How hard could it be to write a compatible video uploader that would run everywhere? As I soon discovered, not very hard at all. After all, I have access to the C++ source code for the existing Windows-specific uploader, and I can spend my 20% time working on whatever I want. And I have plenty of experience writing portable code, given that I program in Java.
Java comes pre-installed on the vast majority of operating systems in use today, or it's available as a free download from Sun. And software written in Java really, really does work across all those platforms, as a decade of work by software developers can attest. The Java mantra "Write once, run anywhere" is a reality -- it just works. Java programs also tend to be less buggy than their C/C++ counterparts, and programmers working in Java are a lot more productive - but these are topics for another post.
Anyway, now you can sign up for the Google Video Uploader for Macintosh, and ditto for Linux (and UNIX and Solaris and HP-UX and AIX and lots of other platforms). The same sign-up page goes to to the Windows version too. So now I can ponder a different problem - namely, which of my videos I want to share with the world.
Feed me
If you're like many savvy web users, you may be reading this via a feed reader, along with all the other blogs, newspapers, and other content that interests you. Whether a feed is Atom-enabled or RSS, it offers great flexibility for users and additional distribution for publishers. As with many promising technologies feeds haven't quite hit the mainstream yet, nor are the business models entirely sorted out.
Enter AdSense for feeds, launching today in beta. The idea is simple: advertisers have their ads placed in the most appropriate feed articles; publishers are paid for their original content; readers see relevant advertising - and in the long run, more quality feeds to choose from. Given the great flexibility that feeds can offer, it's essential to get the model right, especially so that readers are satisfied. Towards this end we have outlined what we believe are some best practices for advertising in feeds. Publishers who want to participate in the public beta can apply here.
Sunday, May 15, 2005
A Bay to Breakers break
The Bay to Breakers 12k run is a hallowed (if irreverent) Bay Area tradition that starts at San Francisco's Embarcadero (the Bay), and ends in Golden Gate Park (sort of close to the breakers of the Pacific - ok, it's a bit of poetic license). Though serious runners compete, the streets are clogged with up to 70,000 hardy souls —
— a mix of halfway decent and annual runners, often in costume (or not; there's a band of nude runners too).
Today's 94th race included more than 40 Googlers running as the "We're Feeling Lucky" team. We ran for fun and to raise money for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. Our "Lucky" Team "donned special T-shirts emblazoned with the hurdles doodle from the 2004 Summer Olympics on the front, and individual letters that collectively spell GOOOOOOOGLE on the back. Faster runners got the G-O tees, and well, the rest of us got O-O-G-L-E.
Of course, we did a little advertising. This was a good crowd to inform that as always, we're hiring.
Thursday, May 12, 2005
Q&A: the world tour
When we launched Google Q&A, we told you it was just the beginning. Today marks the start of the Google Q&A world tour -- we're kicking off with the UK (who's the prime minister again?), Ireland (what's the population of Dublin?), Canada (how many people live there?), Australia (what's the capital?), and New Zealand (how big is it, anyway?). So now I can't say it's still just the beginning, but it's still very early. We're putting together a lot of new information like this to help you get the quickest possible answers to all your questions, so keep checking back for more.
(updated with a new link)
Wednesday, May 11, 2005
Mini goes Euro
Turns out that businesses in London, Madrid and Dusseldorf have the same headaches as those in Chicago or Vancouver: they can't find that sales presentation on the company intranet. Or customers fill up the support line with calls for info that's actually on the website. Google Mini to the rescue. So now it's for sale in the UK and throughout the EU.
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