Thursday, March 31, 2005
Need a ride?
One of the things I like most about Google is the ability to create useful tools for our users that leverage current products. There's no shortage of ideas, for instance, on how to use Google Maps; here's one we're ready to show you.
If you're like me, you use a mix of recommendations from friends, the phone book, or standing on the corner with your hand in the air (and hoping it isn't raining) when you need to find a taxi, limousine or shuttle service. With Google Ride Finder, you can tell us where you want to find a ride and we'll show you the actual positions of participating vehicles in that area, along with a phone number you can use to contact the fleet operator (e.g., Chicago).
We're just getting started, so forgive us if we don't have your city or ride provider yet; we'll be adding more as they become available. If you're a fleet owner/operator, get in touch with us; we'd love to include your vehicle.
Now I've got to run to catch my ride to the airport.
Wednesday, March 30, 2005
Enhanced searching with Firefox
Now Google's faster than ever on Firefox and Mozilla browsers. When you do a search on these browsers, we instruct them to download your top search result in advance, so if you click on it, you'll get to that page even more quickly.
You can learn more about this cool feature here. If you're a webmaster, we have FAQs for you too. Or you can just download Firefox and check it out for yourself.
Tuesday, March 29, 2005
Puzzling images
Wei-Hwa Huang, Software Engineer
As a little bonus for my fellow employees who were around during the winter, I held a little on-campus contest. I took 130 photographs of things around the buildings and challenged people to identify them and go to the location, where they'd then have to find a little hidden sticker with a letter on it. They'd email the letter to me to confirm that they found the location. I thought our blog readers might find it interesting to identify what's in these photographs, which were some of the more challenging pictures.
The answers are in an old computer-geek code called ROT-13. Or you can click on the links to see some of our search results for the item. Have fun!
As a little bonus for my fellow employees who were around during the winter, I held a little on-campus contest. I took 130 photographs of things around the buildings and challenged people to identify them and go to the location, where they'd then have to find a little hidden sticker with a letter on it. They'd email the letter to me to confirm that they found the location. I thought our blog readers might find it interesting to identify what's in these photographs, which were some of the more challenging pictures. |  |  |
| Cvaonyy znpuvar (Onyyl "Fcrpgehz"). | Neebj sebz n "Bar Jnl" fgerrg fvta. | Jngre obggyrf (FznegJngre Fcbeg). |
 |  |  |
| Cbby gnoyr cbpxrg, nf ivrjrq sebz orybj. | Fgevatf vafvqr n onol tenaq cvnab. | Hfrq pbagnvaref sbe Vyyl Rfcerffb. |
 |  |  |
| Fgneg ohggba sbe ivqrb tnzr znpuvar. | Lryybj (nzore) fgerrg yvtug. | "Ivfvgbe Ybool" fvta nf ivrjrq sebz vafvqr. |
The answers are in an old computer-geek code called ROT-13. Or you can click on the links to see some of our search results for the item. Have fun!
Show me the money
on behalf of a hardworking and shy team of finance enthusiasts)
As a Google user, it always bugged me to have to go to other websites to get stock quotes. Now we get a direct feed of market data, so all you have to do is type in a ticker symbol like INDU or SUNW and the search results will include the latest exchange and real-time ECN quote, intraday chart, volume and market cap. And if you're on the go, these quotes are also available on Google SMS. Just send a text message to 46645 ('GOOGL') with the ticker and you'll quickly see the latest market data.
There's a lot of stock info we don't provide, which is why we link to financial sites like Yahoo Finance and Motley Fool. We know people have firm opinions about stock information, so tell us what you think of it -- and how it could be better.
As a Google user, it always bugged me to have to go to other websites to get stock quotes. Now we get a direct feed of market data, so all you have to do is type in a ticker symbol like INDU or SUNW and the search results will include the latest exchange and real-time ECN quote, intraday chart, volume and market cap. And if you're on the go, these quotes are also available on Google SMS. Just send a text message to 46645 ('GOOGL') with the ticker and you'll quickly see the latest market data.
There's a lot of stock info we don't provide, which is why we link to financial sites like Yahoo Finance and Motley Fool. We know people have firm opinions about stock information, so tell us what you think of it -- and how it could be better.
Monday, March 28, 2005
Earthquake information
Another major earthquake has struck the Indian Ocean off the coast of Sumatra. The U.S. Geological Survey estimates the quake at 8.7 magnitude. Tsunami warnings have been issued for Thailand, Japan and Sri Lanka. For more information, try Google News, the International Tsunami Information Center, or the USGS site. Our thoughts and prayers are with all those in the affected countries.
Sunday, March 27, 2005
Will code for pride of place
Krishna Bharat + Lalitesh Katragadda, Bangalore team
Inside every Google engineer is a kid who loves solving problems. Wanting to celebrate that fervor, we just held our first India Code Jam to attract the best software coders in India and South Asia. The competition started in February with some 14,000 contestants in the first round. Several elimination rounds later, 50 finalists were flown to our R&D Center in Bangalore.
This hardy lot competed on their ability to think creatively, design expertly, and code correctly and efficiently - traits that dovetail with creating Google's search algorithms, products and infrastructure. On Saturday morning expectations were high. Brains went on overdrive. Two and a half hours later the dust settled. The top winner: Ardian K Poernomo, a computer science student from Singapore, who won Rs. 3,00,000 (US $7000). We don't know whether Ardian will want to join Google, but we do know a lot of coders had good geeky fun. If you missed the Jam but are Bangalore-bound, consider joining us.
Google Bangalore
Inside every Google engineer is a kid who loves solving problems. Wanting to celebrate that fervor, we just held our first India Code Jam to attract the best software coders in India and South Asia. The competition started in February with some 14,000 contestants in the first round. Several elimination rounds later, 50 finalists were flown to our R&D Center in Bangalore.
This hardy lot competed on their ability to think creatively, design expertly, and code correctly and efficiently - traits that dovetail with creating Google's search algorithms, products and infrastructure. On Saturday morning expectations were high. Brains went on overdrive. Two and a half hours later the dust settled. The top winner: Ardian K Poernomo, a computer science student from Singapore, who won Rs. 3,00,000 (US $7000). We don't know whether Ardian will want to join Google, but we do know a lot of coders had good geeky fun. If you missed the Jam but are Bangalore-bound, consider joining us.
Google Bangalore
Thursday, March 24, 2005
A bun gartetg!
Google is already available in 104 languages, from Afrikaans to Zulu, but we had no Romansh. It's an old tongue that's still spoken in valleys in the Swiss Alps. Only about one percent of Swiss people can speak it, but even so it's one of the country's four official languages. Romansh is in the same family as Spanish or Italian, but looks more daunting because of the long sequences of consonants. For example, "image search" becomes "tschertga da maletgs."
So we threw a party in Zurich and asked people fluent in Romansh to translate text like "I'm feeling lucky." (They found this particularly hard to translate, and settled on "A bun gartetg," which is more or less "on good luck"). And now there is Google in Romansh. Why do we bother? Call us obsessive, but we like it when everyone can use Google in their native language.
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