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February 08 2010
Love and the Super Bowl
If you like it too, we hope you'll watch the others. Enjoy.
February 07 2010
Google to Air Super Bowl Ad?
On their way to become a more normal company, Google went from No Ads to Mostly Good Ads. Two examples are the “story” videos for for Google search and one for the Nexus One phone. Some speculations are that Google will now air an ad in the Super Bowl due in some hours. Wikipedia explains:
The Super Bowl has been the championship game of the National Football League (NFL), the premier association of professional American football, since 1967. In most years, the Super Bowl is the most-watched American television broadcast. Many popular singers and musicians have performed during the event’s pre-game and halftime ceremonies. The day on which the Super Bowl is played is now considered a de facto American national holiday, called Super Bowl Sunday. Super Bowl Sunday is the second-largest day for U.S. food consumption, after Thanksgiving Day. (...)
Because of its high viewership, commercial airtime for the Super Bowl broadcast is the most expensive of the year. Due to the high cost of investing in advertising on the Super Bowl, companies regularly develop their most expensive advertisements for this broadcast. As a result, watching and discussing the broadcast’s commercials has become a significant aspect of the event.
As Wikipedia’s Super Bowl advertising history page notes, one past highlight was in 1984, when “the ad for Apple’s Macintosh followed a 1984 theme. Directed by Ridley Scott, the ad featured a woman wearing track-and-field clothing sprinting into a large auditorium and hurling a large hammer into a screen”.
[Via Paul.]
[By Philipp Lenssen | Origin: Google to Air Super Bowl Ad? | Comments]
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Google CEO Eric Schmidt Tweets Of Google Super Bowl Ad
Google CEO Eric Schmidt rarely tweets on Twitter -- he has posted 15 messages since Dec. 7 2009 -- but one he posted Feb. 6 struck like a lightning bolt.
The search engine will apparently air an ad during the third quarter of today's NFL Superbowl, which can cost $3 million for just 3 minutes of air time. See Schmidt's tweet:
Google has to do something with that $25 billion of cash in the bank. Why not call attention to itself during the biggest advertising blitz of the year in the U.S.? For those who care, the Indianapolis Colts and the New Orleans Saints will play in the contest.
People of course are speculating: will it be an ad for the Google Nexus One? This would surprise, as, unlike the massive ad campaign for the Motorola Droid by Verizon Wireless, this smartphone has been relegated to word-of-mouth and sales only through the Google Webstore.
John Battelle thinks it could be an ad for search an this ad in particular:
But does the leading search engine in the world really need to tell people about itself? I think 70 percent of the world is well acquainted with Google. Unless of course, Google wants to bash Bing, which could be fun:
For more Google/Superbowl action, see the YouTube AdBlitz channel, where users can go to pick this year's best Superbowl commercial. The winning ad will appear on YouTube's homepage.
You don't have to pick Google's ad. How can anyone compete with the lecherous allure of those GoDaddy.com girls, or the various and sundry commercials of people doing stupid stuff for the sake of beet? But Google wouldn't mind.
Google Maps Nearby Places Are Too Similar to Be Truly Useful
The Google Maps team added a new feature that pits competing businesses against one another in a block of local links on Place Pages.
Normally I praise the endless rollout of Maps features, but I'm torn about this feature, dubbed "Nearby Place You Might Like."
I did a search on Borders Bookstore and picked this entry for Wilton, Ct. It listed nine other bookstores within a 40 mile radius:
That's great if I'm on the road and want to make a tour of bookstores, but what if I want to see nearby movies, restaurants and other shops in the immediate area? I'm out of luck, and have to do individual searches for other local businesses in the area. That requires more engagement with my phone.
Here's another example. I'm going to see "The View From the Bridge" in a couple weeks at the Cort Theater in New York City. I want to find a restaurant or a coffee shop to cool my heels after the show. If I enter Cort Theatre, I'd expect to see a variety of businesses.
Instead, I get 10 other theaters:
Again, I'm forced to do other searches. So, I like the concept, but the practice needs to improve. Show me the variety!
Another problem inherent in lumping book stores with bookstores and theaters with theaters is that competing businesses are vying for our attention.
As pointed out by the pros at Search Engine Land, these Place Pages are supposed to help prop up businesses who place ads on Google.
But is putting rival businesses side by side going to make them happy? Google could argue that the placement alone is advantageous, but not every small business bookstore will be happy seeing their link next to that of a Borders chain store.
February 06 2010
Frequency of Strip Versions of Various Games (xkcd)
[Cartoon from Xkcd by Randall Munroe, (cc) free to share but not to sell]
[By Philipp Lenssen | Origin: Frequency of Strip Versions of Various Games ... | Comments]
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Google Chrome PageRank Checker
I was just trying to find out the PageRank of a couple of sites using Internet Explorer’s Google Toolbar, but something was broken. Google Chrome has a nice PageRank extension, though. As you can see in the screenshot, it’s helpful by immediately showing the actual value instead of just a green bar. A couple of times it reverted to zero after loading, but otherwise the values it was showing looked like they were the correct ones. (Considering it doesn’t look like it’s an offical extension, I’m not sure though how accurate the values are now, or will be in the future.)
[By Philipp Lenssen | Origin: Google Chrome PageRank Checker | Comments]
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This week in search 2/5/10
In addition to language improvements this week, we released several other new features:
Haitian Creole translation
We've now added Haitian Creole (kreyòl ayisyen) translation to Google Translate, so that you can translate between Creole and 51 other languages, and also hear spoken versions of Creole translations. While this translation system is still evolving (when translating to/from Creole, English performs better than other languages), we hope it will help relief volunteers communicate better with Haitian earthquake victims, and serve as a useful resource for people in Haiti and elsewhere. To learn more about ways you can help with Haiti relief efforts, please visit our Crisis Response page.
Example translations: [Kijan ou ye ?] and [How can I help you?]
Improvement for Arabic searches
Sometimes when people conduct a search, they forget to separate words with spaces or mistakenly repeat a letter within a word. These types of errors are much more common in languages like Arabic, where some letters are considered word breaks. In other words, if the last letter of one word is a word break, the following word may not be separated with a space. To address issues like this, we recently developed a search ranking improvement that targets certain Arabic queries. Our algorithm employs rules of Arabic spelling and grammar and signals from historical search data to indicate when to leave out spaces between words or when to remove unnecessarily repeated letters. Now, when you type a query leaving out spaces or repeating a letter, you'll see better results based not only on what you typed, but also on what our algorithm understands is the "correct" query.
Example search: [التربيةوالتعلييم] Incorrectly typed, this Arabic query may not produce a relevant search result. With our algorithm change, the query returns better results for the correct meaning: "Ministry of Education."
Doodle 4 Google
This week marks our third annual Doodle 4 Google contest in the U.S. The competition gives K-12 kids the opportunity to design their own Google logo and the winner appears on Google.com for a day so that hundreds of millions of searchers can enjoy it as well. In addition to the bragging rights, there are a number of great prizes including a college scholarship and computer's for the winner's school. If you or your child are interested in getting involved, check out our announcement or visit the Doodle 4 Google contest page for entry rules.
Stars in Google News
A couple of months back, we launched the Custom Sections Directory feature in Google News, enabling you to setup and share sections on topics of interest. Now there's an even easier way to keep up to date with particular news stories. Mark a story cluster by clicking on the star next to it — just like you do with messages in Gmail and items in Google Reader. Once you've starred a story in Google News, when there are significant updates, we'll alert you by putting the headline in boldface. You can also follow your most recent starred stories in the Starred section of Google News. Learn more about this, and get starring!
Thanks for following news of our search enhancements, and stay tuned for more.
February 05 2010
Google Apps highlights – 2/5/2010
Developments over the last couple weeks really showcase how Google's other innovation focus areas — including Search, Mobile and Chrome — help make Google Apps even more useful.
Updates to Google Search in Gmail Labs
On Tuesday we made some helpful changes to the Google Search feature in Gmail Labs. The search gadget now runs some of Google's most popular search features, like dictionary definitions, spelling suggestions, calculations, local results, weather info and news. You don't even need to type your search query anymore; just highlight text in the compose area and click the multicolored "g" button to run a search on those terms.
Gmail Chrome extensions
Several convenient extensions for Gmail are now available to Chrome users. The "Google Mail" extension adds a small button next to Chrome's address bar that displays your unread mail count. "Send from Gmail" makes Gmail your default mail program, and opens a Gmail compose window when you click an email link on a web page. The button for this extension helps you quickly share the web page you're viewing over email.
Easier file location in Google Docs
Last week we introduced a pair of improvements to make finding files in Google Docs easier. First, we launched an option to show file thumbnails in your Documents List, which is great for quickly spotting what you're looking for. Just click the view option buttons in the toolbar to toggle between thumbnails and the standard text layout.
Scripts for Google Apps Standard Edition
At the end of last week we launched application scripting for Google Apps Standard Edition. (Before it was only available to businesses and schools using Premier and Education Editions.) Scripts can be triggered from spreadsheets to perform automated tasks and calculations, but scripts go far beyond spreadsheets; they can be used to fire off automated email messages, create appointments in Google Calendar and accomplish other actions across the whole Google Apps suite. We've written up a few script tutorials if you have the itch to give scripting a try.
Mobile device management
Just yesterday, Google Apps Premier and Education Edition customers got a boost in their ability to manage mobile devices synced with Google Apps. Right from the online control panel, IT admins can remotely wipe data from lost or stolen mobile phones, configure devices to lock after a period of inactivity and set password strength requirements. These new capabilities are available for iPhones, Windows Mobile devices and Nokia E-series phones. Stay tuned for similar features for Android devices.
Who's gone Google?
It's been another very active couple weeks helping more businesses and schools move to the cloud. The team is happy to welcome the latest crop of Google Apps customers, including Complinet, The Open University, Villanova University, Small World Financial Services, Tuskegee University, Clemson University and the New Zealand Post.
Saline Area Schools in Michigan has an especially impressive "gone Google" story. They're saving $400,000 in the first year, spending much less time on server administration, keeping spam at bay and fostering better collaboration among faculty.
Fairchild Semiconductor also recounted their experience switching 6,000 employees spread across 20 countries off their legacy Lotus Notes installation, selecting Google Apps and Postini over hosted email alternatives from Microsoft and IBM. Barry Driscoll, Senior Director of IT for Fairchild summed it up best: "Now we are providing our employees with a lot more functionality for a lot less money."
Hope you're enjoying the latest round of new capabilities, whether you're using Google Apps with friends and family, with work colleagues, or with classmates. For details and the latest news in this area, check out the Google Apps Blog.
Why Google and Apple Should Take a Look at Siri
The battle for the mobile Web is getting more interesting, with Apple filing location-based patents that compete with Google's Latitude location feature for Google Maps and both Google (AdMob) and Apple (Quattro) bidding for ad networks to monetize the mobile Web.
Out of Stanford University's research arm comes Siri, a company whose mobile application leverages artificial intelligence to conduct transactions for smartphone users looking to book a table at a restaurant or buy movie tickets while on the go.
I profiled Siri on eWEEK here in detail today, but you should really see the demo video for yourself to grok the technology:
'
If you like what you see and you're an iPhone user, you're in luck. You can download it from Apple's App Store today. Android and RIM users will have to wait a few months before Siri for those platform is ready.
But surely you can see how this sort of smart machine learning app would be a smash hit for people doing voice search on their smartphones, no matter what platform they use.
Sure, you can grab your Google Nexus One, and do searches with your voice, or fill in text fields by speaking, but Siri seems not only more accurate in the tests I've see, but more actionable.
Siri CEO Dag Kittlaus told me the key difference between Google's voice search and Siri:
Search engines don't work like Siri. They do statistical matching on indexes and they don't understand what you're trying to do, they're just correlating words to words that exist on Web sites. Google will give you information that has the promise to get you where you want to go, but you have to go down several streams and you often find out it wasn't what you thought it was. Siri holds your hand all the way through the process until you've completed the task.
It's fairly likely Siri is one of those apps that represents the future of mobile, location-based search and transactions for users that will expect to simply speak their requests and let the software do the rest, find service providers and execute transactions.
Whether they boosted or squashed the Siri app, Google and Apple would no doubt love to have the talent behind it, including Kittlaus, Adam Cheyer, co-founder and vice president of engineering ; and co-founder and CTO Tom Gordon, for their mobile apps teams.
Don't be surprised or Google, Apple, or even Nokia buys out Siri for the technology and talent behind it.
Google-inspired designer collections
Google Earth in Microsoft Flight Simulator
Google I/O 2010 is coming in May, but we're already starting to hear about some of the neat projects that will be unveiled there.
The first one is called GEVision, which is trying to evolve into a 3D scenery engine. Their initial goal is to use Google Earth as the scenery in Microsoft Flight Simulator: "In the past various attempts had been made to use Google Earth scenery instead of the one included in Microsoft Flight Simulator FSX. Yet due to limitations in the interface technology this has never been fully achieved. GEVision is a new project that will enable the use of Google Earth as a full blown 3D scenery engine."
There have been some integrations of MS Flight Sim and Google Earth in the past, but nothing to this extent. Previous integrations include a version that used Google Earth as an overhead map and an idea to take Flight Sim Scenery and use it in Google Earth.
Over the past few years Google Earth imagery, combined with improved terrain quality and more 3D buildings, has blown past the quality found in Microsoft Flight Sim. The only real downside would be less realistic airports (MS Flight Sim does a great job with those), but that is improving with each new imagery update as well. On the flip side, Google Earth has a built-in flight simulator, but it's not nearly as full-featured as the one made by Microsoft. Combining the best of both could create something pretty neat.
The video below shows the vast quality difference between Google Earth and MS Flight Simulator X:
If you'd like more information about how to use the Google Earth Plug-in in a desktop application, this page should help. GEVision is expected to unveil some type of public release at Google I/O, so we're looking forward to seeing what comes out of it.
If you know of other neat projects coming at I/O, send me an email and let me know about it.
Google People Hopper
Google’s social network site Orkut has a new application that lets you morph one face into another. Called People Hopper, it was broken yesterday but is working now. I’ve created a profile for this purpose (I deleted my real one a while ago) and morphed the first picture, Mr. John Cleese, into Tony Ruscoe below:
The interesting part here is that the intermediate steps themselves are other people from Orkut. Clicking on any face will take you to their profile. Nice here is that Google does some face detection, so you don’t need to work with perfectly cropped portraits. Beyond this, the general area of face search/ portrait comparison/ finding likely-looking faces might have some privacy implications in the future. Will Google Images be able to find your appearance twin in a couple of years – and would we want to be found?
[Thanks WebSonic.nl and Tony!]
[By Philipp Lenssen | Origin: Google People Hopper | Comments]
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February 04 2010
Extending Google Chrome 25,621 Miles
Google, Microsoft Meet in The Lobby on Capitol Hill
Google and Microsoft compete in search, cloud computing and Web services, but their battles extend from boardroom bargaining with customers to the nation's capitol.
Google spent $4 million on lobbying in 2009, up from $2.84 million in 2008 and almost three times the $1.52 million it spent in 2007, according to figures compiled by the U.S. Senate. Microsoft's own lobbying spend plummeted from 2007 and 2008, where it was around $9 million, to $6.72 million. Let's look at Google's impressive rise first.
Google spent on lobbying for privacy and competition issues related to online advertising, copyright laws and its Google Book Search settlement. The roots go back a few years. See the report here:
Ever since Google's YouTube and DoubleClick acquisitions from a few years ago, and especially since Google tried to preempt Microsoft from buying Yahoo in 2008, the search engine has felt the fat fingers of the government caressing its thickening neck ($2 billion in profit for Q4, $24.5 billion in the bank).
Google is currently being challenged by the Department of Justice and other parties over its Google Book Search proposal. Google is also facing regulatory scrutiny from the Federal Trade Commission over its bid to buy mobile ad network AdMob for $750 million.
Then there are the omnipresent privacy watchdogs, whispering and sometimes shouting their discontent over Google's data collection practices in cloud computing.
So we may choose to view Google's spending on Capitol Hill lobbying as gardening, or sowing seeds to defend its current and future plans and practices.
Of course, Google can thank Microsoft for ratcheting up the rhetoric in Washington, D.C. More than once, Googlers have told me Microsoft may be behind some of the many attacks made on Google's propriety.
However, a Google spokesperson wouldn't take the bait on whether Google's boost in spending was influenced by the rants of Microsoft and other opponents that claim Google is growing evil as it grows larger, adding:
"I wouldn't say it's directly attributable at all. We've always had a plan for steady growth in Washington. I don't think it would surprise anybody that as Washington takes on more issues that impact our users and out industry that Google wants to have a strong presence in Washington. We know that as we grow we're going to have more responsibility to live up to that [Don't Be Evil] motto."
Microsoft has been there, done that as the main quarry of DOJ hunts from the mid-1990s through 2005. Google, through its own capitalistic endeavors and success, is now the hunted.
Indeed, while Google's lobbying spend has increased each year since it began lobbying in 2005 (for a paltry $260,000), Microsoft's own lobbying spend has decreased.
See this Google-Microsoft comparison chart from AllThingsDigital:
It bears repeating: Microsoft's 2009 lobbying spend was $6.72 million, still nearly three million more than that of Google's spend, but more than $2 million less than its 2008 and 2007 totals of $9 million or so.
Microsoft, a loss leader on the Web, is no longer considered Corporate Enemy No. 1.
Microsoft must feel some cognitive dissonance here; while it's nice not to be the top target of governmental scrutiny, it's also a sign that its not a threat to consumers, let along competitors. Google, and Microsoft haters, must love that.
Where the government is considered, it's hard not to view Google as the new Microsoft. Google's rise in lobbying spend, coupled with Microsoft's precipitous fall in spend, is indicative of that.
Some parts of the ocean are now high-resolution
We mentioned it briefly a few days ago, and Google has now released some of that new data for the ocean in Google Earth.
As Google explains in their blog, most of the underwater terrain is generated use satellite extrapolations of water surface height. This technique has allowed them to create the undersea terrain for most of the planet, but it's rather low-resolution.
However, a handful of organizations are able to collect high-resolution data using other techniques, and some of that data is now available in Google Earth. This data is collected using echosounding sonar from ships, and it much more detailed than the standard ocean terrain in Google Earth.
This new data has come from a variety of sources, including:
- The Center for Coastal and Ocean Mapping - Joint Hydrographic Center
- The Living Oceans Society
- The California State University at Monterey Bay
- Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI)
Google has produced a short undersea tour to show off some of the new terrain. Download it
and check it out. They'll continue to add more data as time goes on, so the data and imagery will keep improving over time.
Google + NSA?
The Washington Post writes:
The world’s largest Internet search company and the world’s most powerful electronic surveillance organization are teaming up in the name of cybersecurity.
Under an agreement that is still being finalized, the National Security Agency would help Google analyze a major corporate espionage attack that the firm said originated in China and targeted its computer networks, according to cybersecurity experts familiar with the matter. The objective is to better defend Google – and its users – from future attack.
The Washington Post’s sources say “the alliance is being designed to allow the two organizations to share critical information without violating Google’s policies or laws that protect the privacy of Americans’ online communications.”
Aren’t partnerships a two way street, though? What if the NSA comes knocking on Google’s door asking for help next time?
[By Philipp Lenssen | Origin: Google + NSA? | Comments]
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February 03 2010
Doodle 4 Google — Tell us what you would do if you could do anything...
In addition to the winner's art appearing on Google.com on May 27, 2010, they'll also receive a $15,000 college scholarship, a laptop computer and a $25,000 technology grant for their school.
This year's theme is "If Could Do Anything, I Would..." and it's all about pushing the limits, dreaming big, and seeing what you can accomplish in life. When coming up with inspiration for this year's contest, we turned to some of our very own Googlers, including Ed Lu, a former astronaut.Ed typifies this year's theme in action, and shares an inspiring anecdote:
On my first mission STS-84, one of my crewmates and I were having dinner aboard the Space Shuttle Atlantis. After all our work for the day was done, we decided to eat "upside down" on the ceiling, gazing out at the Earth moving by below our feet. As we flew around the Earth, watching the continents go by, my crewmate remarked how amazingly large the Earth really is. But at that same time, it also felt small to us. There we were, flying at 18,000 miles per hour around the Earth in a machine built by humans, with a crew made up of astronauts from all over the world. Both of our observations were true at the same time. The world is indeed a big place with many challenges. But by using science, technology and the power of people working together, nearly anything is possible.
So dream big! If you could do anything, what would you do?
For even more inspiration, you can see last year's winner, Christin Engelberth, a sixth grader at Bernard Harris Middle School in San Antonio, Texas. She titled her doodle "A New Beginning" to express her wish that "out of the current crisis, discoveries will be found to help the Earth prosper once more."
We're happy to let you know that this year, we've also assembled a panel of well-known "Expert Jurors," including creative directors, cartoonists and famous animators ranging from Sesame Workshop to Pixar Animation Studios. Our Expert Jurors will help us narrow down the cream of the crop to 40 regional finalists, who will come to the Google office in New York City on May 26, 2010. For the second year, we'll also be partnering with the Smithsonian's Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum, where the top 40 regional finalists will get to have their artwork displayed in a national exhibit. And for the first time this year, we'll give out eight Technology Booster awards to schools that submit maximum number of doodles per school by March 10th and have students in our 400 State Finalists.
Please visit the official competition website for a full listing of all contest rules and requirements. Only students from registered schools can enter, so be sure your school is registered by March 17, 2010. All doodles must be submitted by March 31, 2010.
We hope you're as excited about this year's contest as we are. Good luck!
Google Wave Gets Project Management Via Wrike.com
Google Wave has been in the wild for months, and Google has confirmed to me that more than 1 million people are actively using it.
But enterprise adoption of Wave may well be predicated on how many extensions are built for the open source Wave platform that will help knowledge workers better collaborate.
Wrike.com, which makes a well-regarded project management SAAS suite, Feb. 3 said it is now automatically syncing with Wave to help distributed workgroups leverage the real-time capabilities of Google's collaboration platform to manage projects.
Project management isn't the sexiest software in the world and workers will sympathize with fellow sufferers of Microsoft Project or Basecamp. Google Wave's real-time collaboration perks could liven things a bit for Wrike.com users.
Wrike.com CEO Andrew Filev explained that Google Wave is a fine brainstorming, concept creation, document discussion, or note-taking platform for meetings, it lacks the facility to help workers organize and track projects. "Integration with Wrike helps to elegantly cover this gap," he said.
Thanks to Wrike.com's integration, made possible through the open source Google Wave API, users of Wrike.com and Wave only need to add Wrike.com as a contact to a new wave to make the wave a task in Wrike.com.
After a Wave user who has a Wrike.com account adds wrike-wave@appspot.com to his Wave contacts, the user can create tasks and set the due dates right from the Wave.
If the integration works properly, new waves created by a user are immediately turned into tasks in the project management software workspace. The title of the wave becomes the task title; the rest of the wave's blip content is turned into the task description.
If the wave's title contains a project name and a due date, Wrike.com puts the task in the correct project folder with the proper due date for the task. Blips in the wave added by other wave participants are added to the task as comments. See here:
Wrike.com updates the project schedules automatically, and all the changes can be seen on an interactive Gantt chart. See here:
When task are propagated in Wrike's project management system, users can keep track of all the changes made to this task. Wrike will also automatically notify project members about updates and due date reminders via e-mail.
Again, it can't be overstated how important it is for developers to chip in their add-ons, plug-ins and integrations for Google Wave if the platform is going to gain any mindshare in enterprises. With mindshare snowballing, marketshare may follow.
No one will desert their IBM Lotus, Microsoft SharePoint or even Google Apps platforms yet, but Wave could be promising if Google and third-party collaborators such as Wrike.com continue to make Wave a valuable business tool.
Teaser: I spoke to Google Enterprise President Dave Girouard recently, and, without spoiling my future content, Google has no intentions of letting Wave gather dust.
New updates to the historical imagery
A sharp-eyed reader ('Sladys') has pointed out that more historical imagery has been added to Google Earth. In particular, it seems that a lot of imagery from 1943 has been added to Germany, France and Italy.
Some of the specific cites found with updates so far include:
Germany: Hamburg, Augsburg, Nuremberg, Freiburg, Koblenz Dortmund, Lübeck, Kiel, Stuttgart, Wiesbaden, Mainz, Frankfurt/Main, Bonn, Cologne, Düsseldorf, Bamberg, Regensburg, Göttingen, Kehl, Magdeburg, Dessau, Leipzig, Dresden and more of Berlin.
France: Strasbourg, Bordeaux and Lyon.
Italy: Torino, Florence, Naples, Bologna, Rome.
Fresh historical can be difficult to find, as there's no good technique for searching out the new additions. You simply need to be familiar with the available imagery for a particular reason and recognize when new imagery becomes available.
Assuming this imagery is indeed fresh (which it seems to be, but we can't prove), Google will likely put out a blog post about it like they did for the new Berlin imagery back in November of last year.
To view any of the historical imagery in Google Earth, you can view this short guide that Frank created when the feature first arrived.
If you come across any other historical imagery that you think was recently added to Google Earth, leave a comment and let us know.
Chrome OS Tablet Mockups
"On tablets, the UI would be adjusted to handle larger touch targets. Initial explorations have maintained the same basic chrome layout, but enlarged the controls. Icons could be placed above tabs to provide larger, square targets. Panels would be placed along the bottom edge and could be opened with upward dragging motions," explains Google.
Even if Chrome OS was initially designed for netbooks, Google hopes to create an operating system that works on tablets, laptops and desktop computers. "Each would have vastly different input methods, available screen space, and processing power".
Chrome OS has the advantage of a simple interface optimized for web applications. This may seem too restrictive, but Chrome, Safari, Firefox and other browsers are quickly evolving and many popular apps are migrating to the web.
{ via TechCrunch }
Maybe Soup is currently being updated? I'll try again automatically in a few seconds...
