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June 17, 2010
17:00
Best of E3, Computing In Bed, SSD Lifespan, Easy Registry Repair, Lunchwalla, Bombproof iPhone Cases! - Tekzilla
» ‎ Tekzilla (High Definition Quicktime)

Enclosure: [download]

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How Long Will An SSD Last? Brian Brushwood Reports from E3, The Biggest Event in Video Games! Practice Safe iPhone: Get A Better Case, Boxee Box Release Date, Recording Audio In Audacity Via USB, Viewer iPad Stand Alternatives

11:33
Easier sharing in Google Docs
» ‎ Official Google Blog

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Today, I rarely work on documents in isolation. I share docs with teammates for feedback, help them with their design docs and presentations and regularly make my files available to all of Google.

When using applications to collaborate with others, it's important to have control over your data and how it's shared. With Google Docs, you've always been able to share documents with individuals and groups. Today, we're making it even easier with a new simplified interface that make it even easier to share and see who has access to your files. For an overview of what's new, take a look at this video:

Documents, spreadsheets and presentations can now be identified as “Private,” “Anyone with a link” or “Public on the web.” As before, all docs start out as private by default.

These new visibility options appear as a link next to the title of every doc. Clicking this link or the “Share” button takes you straight to the new interface where you can see who has access, manage sharing access and invite others to share the doc.

These improvements have started to roll out and should be available to everyone in the next week. If you’re interested in learning more about these changes and other new sharing features, check out our post on the Google Docs blog. If you’re using Google Apps for your school or business, our post on the Enterprise Blog covers how you can share docs more easily within your organization.

Posted by Vikki Chou, Software Engineer
9:01
Summer is here, and so is Google Commerce Search 2.0
» ‎ Official Google Blog

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School is out for the summer, and that means it’s time for some swimsuit shopping, travel purchases and—before we know it—buying back-to-school supplies.

To help retail sites get ready for the summer shopping season, today we’re launching Google Commerce Search 2.0 for retailers in the United States and United Kingdom. The new version of Google Commerce Search provides a better experience online for shoppers and greater control—with immediate ROI—for retailers.

Google Commerce Search, first launched a little over six months ago, is an enterprise-grade website search solution hosted in Google’s cloud and designed specifically for online retailers. This second release includes a number of improvements:
- More merchant customization: Today we’re introducing a full merchandising dashboard, which gives merchants more control over promotions, ranking rules and filtering. Marketers and product merchandisers can now do all of this themselves—no custom code necessary. New intuitive retailer controls like time-based promotions, navigation bar with filters, and simple product ranking rules mean seasonal optimizations can be done on the fly.
- Better shopper experience: With query autocompletion, retailers can offer common queries to shoppers in real time, as they type, without any custom coding. GCS is also faster and more relevant than before thanks to search quality improvements. Because it’s hosted in the Google cloud, search results are returned to shoppers in less than a second. We’ve also added spelling and stemming dictionaries and new custom synonym options to make shopping on a retail site as easy and accurate as searching on Google.com.
- Improved browsing and navigation: Many shoppers depend on the search bar on retail sites when they’re looking to make a purchase, but some people will always prefer to navigate through different categories and discover new products. Now, Google Commerce Search allows visitors to shop by browsing around your site as well as searching directly for products.
Finally, we’re making the benefits of Google Commerce Search 2.0 available to a wider range of retailers by introducing a pricing model that starts at $25,000/year. Get in touch with us to learn more.

As more consumers turn to online channels to purchase and research products, it’s important for your site to keep up with them using the best technology out there. So with summer just around the corner, make sure your sunscreen’s on, your beach blanket is ready and your e-commerce site is optimized with Google Commerce Search.

Posted by Nitin Mangtani, Senior Product Manager
June 16, 2010
23:13
Edit video online with the YouTube Video Editor
» ‎ Official Google Blog

Tags: [edit]
With software installations and complicated instructions, editing video can be a hassle—but we think it should be easy. Today, we’re introducing YouTube’s new online video editor, which makes editing your video a cinch. It’s available in TestTube, where YouTube engineers and developers test out new tools and get feedback on how they’re doing.

With this new editor, you can:
- Combine multiple videos you’ve uploaded to create a new longer video
- Trim the beginning and/or ending of your videos
- Add soundtracks from our AudioSwap library of tens of thousands of songs
- Create new videos without worrying about file formats and publish them to YouTube with one click—no upload necessary
All that, and you don’t need to install any extra software. Here’s a video from YouTube user rewboss that gives you a glimpse of how it works:

Check out the YouTube Blog for more details. And once you’ve given the editor a whirl, let us know what you think by leaving a comment on the YouTube Blog.

Posted by Rushabh Doshi, Software Engineer

Permalink for 'Episode 223: Sony Goes 3D, #ATTFAIL, Love in the (Macbook) Air?, Microsoft's Kinect Dog, Chatroulette's Genital Recognition Algorithm and more!'

12:41

Episode 223: Sony Goes 3D, #ATTFAIL, Love in the (Macbook) Air?, Microsoft's Kinect Dog, Chatroulette's Genital Recognition Algorithm and more!

» ‎ Cranky Geeks

June 15, 2010
11:50
The White House takes your questions about the oil spill on YouTube
» ‎ Official Google Blog

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(Cross-posted from the YouTube Blog)

Tonight at 8 p.m. ET, watch President Obama live on the White House YouTube channel as he addresses the nation about the Gulf oil spill. Then 15 minutes after the remarks, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs will answer your questions. Starting right now, you can submit questions about the disaster on Google Moderator, and vote the best ones to the top. Hear more from Mr. Gibbs:

Already, the conversation about the oil spill on the web has been lively. Earlier this month, thousands of you submitted your ideas on how to clean up the oil spill on YouTube, several of which were aired during the PBS NewsHour. And as more and more Americans are searching on Google to find information about the oil spill and cleanup efforts, we want to help you connect directly with the recovery process.

Now’s your chance to hear the White House’s response to your questions about what many are calling the worst man-made environmental disaster in U.S. history. Submit questions now and vote on the ones you think are most important; then tune in tonight to watch the President’s address live on YouTube.

Posted by Steve Grove, YouTube Head of News and Politics
11:01
Bringing sixteen more apps to the Google Apps Marketplace
» ‎ Official Google Blog

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We created the Google Apps Marketplace to make it easier for businesses and universities to benefit from the rapidly growing ecosystem of apps in the cloud. Apps in the Marketplace come in many sizes, from bite-sized apps that focus on providing a single feature to larger standalone apps that run major business systems and processes—and they’re all conveniently integrated with Google apps.

We believe it should be as easy to discover and purchase cloud apps for your organization as it is to get mobile apps for your smartphone. And, once you install and evaluate an app, it’s easy for your administrator to deploy them to users with just a few clicks. (Check out this video to see how it works).

We’ve added some great new apps since we launched in March and today we’re bringing you 16 new apps to the Marketplace. They represent a cross-section of the innovation happening on the web around integrated applications, where information is shared between applications allowing people to get their work done, faster:
- Jive: Jive Social Business Software combines collaboration, community and social networking software, allowing you to engage employees, customers and the social web.
- Harvest: Harvest is a simple time tracking application that makes it fast and easy for businesses to track billable hours and create invoices.
- Floorplanner Pro: Floorplanner Pro provides a quick and easy way for real estate agents and facilities professionals to create and share interactive floor plans in both 2D as 3D.
Check out our post on the Enterprise Blog for more information on all 16 apps, or go right to the Marketplace.

Posted by Scott McMullan, Google Apps Partner Lead, Google Enterprise
June 14, 2010
5:00
YouTube Play: searching with the Guggenheim for the world’s most creative online video
» ‎ Official Google Blog

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(Cross-posted from the YouTube Blog)

Do you ever look at a YouTube video and think, "That's a work of art?" Yep, so do we—and now, so does the Guggenheim.

In five years, YouTube has redefined media culture by changing the way the world creates, distributes and watches video. Online video is exploding not just as a medium, but as an art form, and we’re proud of the originality and innovation that YouTube has fostered among our users. Our community has produced some of the most creative and celebrated works on the Internet, videos that have been viewed by millions of people around the world.

We want to celebrate phenomenal video-makers and recognize the creative potential of the medium. So today we’re collaborating with the Guggenheim Museum to discover the most creative video in the world, and showcase exceptional talent working in the ever-expanding realm of digital media: YouTube Play: A Biennial of Creative Video. This global online initiative is presented in collaboration with HP.

We’re looking for animation, motion graphics, narrative, non-narrative, or documentary work, music videos and entirely new art forms—creations that really challenge the world’s perceptions of what’s possible with video. We want to elevate the debate. This presentation, we hope, will garner some of the finest creative work from every corner of the globe—not only to showcase it on one of the biggest stages online, but also in one of the most iconic artistic venues in the world, the Guggenheim Museum in New York City, and throughout the Guggenheim network of museums in Bilbao, Venice and Berlin.

Participants must submit their videos to YouTube Play to enter. The deadline for submission is July 31, 2010, after which the Guggenheim will assemble a shortlist to be evaluated by an international jury of experts from the worlds of art, design, film and video. Up to 20 videos will be presented at the Guggenheim Museum in New York on October 21, with simultaneous presentations at the Guggenheim museums in Bilbao, Venice and Berlin. The presentations will also be viewable to on the YouTube Play brand channel at youtube.com/play.

As we did with the YouTube Symphony Orchestra, we hope to build an aspirational place for some of the world’s best artists to showcase their works and talents. For more information about how to enter, go to youtube.com/play.

Posted by Ed Sanders, Senior Marketing Manager
June 13, 2010
22:45
This week in search 6/11/10
» ‎ Official Google Blog

Tags: [edit]

This is one of a regular series of posts on search experience updates. Look for the label This week in search and subscribe to the series. - Ed.

One of our goals is to deliver the web content you're looking for as fast as possible. From under-the-hood indexing improvements and small feature enhancements that make search more relevant and intuitive, to directly delivering content to your inbox in your native tongue, all these enhancements are focused on getting you the results you're looking for—fast. Back in December, I wrote here about our efforts in speed, or what we call time-to-result. This week, I'm pleased to revisit this topic and share three new releases from our search teams that showcase the fruits of this focus:

World Cup scores and schedules
This week marked the start of an exciting time for football fans the world over. As many of those fans scour the web for scores and information on the tournament, we want to help organize and present those results as quick and simply as possible. So when you complete a search related to the World Cup, you’ll see live scores, latest results and match schedules at the top of your search results. You’ll also find TV broadcast information and quick links for game recaps, live updates, standings and team profiles. The feature works on all Google search domains in 44 languages, including Afrikaans, Amharic, Swahili and Zulu.

Example searches: [world cup], [world cup spain] and [world cup group g]

Google Alerts in 40 languages
Google Alerts, which we launched in 2003, automatically searches the web to find new information about topics you're interested in and deliver it directly to your inbox. This week, we extended Google Alerts availability to 40 languages, expanding the reach of this helpful product. Google Alerts now supports Arabic, Bulgarian, Catalan, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Filipino, Finnish, Greek, Hindi, Hungarian, Indonesian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Norwegian, Polish, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Slovak, Slovenian, Swedish, Thai, Turkish, Ukrainian and Vietnamese. So, for example, if you want to keep up to date with your favorite World Cup footballer, create an alert for his name and new results will be delivered to your inbox. This feature is helpful to English speakers too—try translating your query into other languages to find out what's being talked about around the world.

To get started, visit the alerts page in your country's domain (for example, here's Arabic in Egypt: www.google.com.eg/alerts).

Caffeine indexing system
This week, we announced the completion of a new web indexing system called Caffeine. This new indexing system provides fresher results for web searches (nearly 50 percent fresher than our previous system) and it's the largest collection of web content we've offered. We built Caffeine to help us meet the evolving expectations of our users, especially as content across the web becomes more global and is published in real time. Caffeine is the definition of speed for us, and we were excited to make this announcement and continue to bring you the best possible content—faster than ever before.

Thanks for reading, and stay tuned for more enhancements next week.

Posted by Jack Menzel, Product Management Director, Search
June 12, 2010
7:30
The power of human rights video
» ‎ Official Google Blog

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A year ago this weekend, Tehran erupted in protest at the disputed results of Iran’s tenth presidential election. In the severe government crackdown that followed, documented on cameras and uploaded by citizens to YouTube, no moment has been seen more than the death of Neda Agha Soltan, a young musician whose brutal killing by a sniper became the rallying cry for Iran’s opposition Green Movement. The anonymous videos of her death even won the prestigious George Polk prize for journalism last year.

How has video become such an important part of human rights advocacy worldwide? In the past, we mainly saw these kinds of images in the nightly news or in documentaries - and even then only occasionally. But now that access to the Internet is much more widespread (even in many developing countries), and billions worldwide have access to ever more powerful cellphones and digital cameras, we encounter human rights images much more directly - on YouTube, in Google searches, in Facebook feeds, through links shared on Twitter.

Today the YouTube blog begins a series of posts exploring the issues around human rights and video in partnership with WITNESS, an international human rights organization that supports people using video to document and expose human rights violations. We encourage you to learn more.

Posted by Steve Grove, Head of News & Politics, YouTube
June 11, 2010
11:00
Blazing the online safety trail
» ‎ Official Google Blog

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When I was in middle school, computer class was spent learning the basics of “keyboarding” and rushing to finish the lesson so I could get back to my journey on the Oregon Trail. My main goal was to survive the river crossings, maintain enough buffalo meat to sustain my family and arrive safely in California with my entire fake family still alive.

Today, many schools are teaching their first graders the basic computer skills I was learning at 13. Teens have always been the quickest adopters of new technology, as parents and teachers struggle to keep up and equip teens to make good decisions online.

When I visited Dunne Technology Academy in South Chicago earlier this week, most of the students were getting ready for their summer break, but we paused for a bit to talk about what they’re doing online. The majority of these tech-savvy teens had all encountered cyberbullying at some point, had seen pictures and information on profiles they thought were inappropriate, and had had someone try to trick them through a phishing scam.

We spent the day discussing ways to avoid being scammed, how to create an online profile that can be an asset rather than a liability, and actions you can take if you’re being bullied, harassed or see inappropriate content. Most students seemed to understand that their online identity and their “real world” self were one and the same, and that they have choices in managing their content and reputation online. We agreed that by applying the rules of good citizenship online, the Internet would be a safer and more enjoyable experience for everyone.

So while teens have more difficult choices online today than to ford or to ferry the river in Oregon Trail, we can prepare them to make smart decisions online. Check out the educational materials from our Digital Literacy Tour in our Google For Educators site at www.google.com/educators/digitalliteracy.html.

Posted by Mandy Albanese, Online Safety team
9:30
Blogger Template Designer now available to everyone
» ‎ Official Google Blog

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In March, we launched the Blogger Template Designer on Blogger in Draft, our experimental playground where you can try out the latest features Blogger has to offer. Today we’re excited to announce that the Blogger Template Designer has graduated from Blogger in Draft and is now available to everyone by default.

Blogger Template Designer is a way for you to easily customize the look of your blog without knowing any HTML or CSS. You can select from a variety of templates, images, colors and column layouts to make your blog an expression of you. See our post on Blogger Buzz for the highlights on this new tool.

You can try the Template Designer on your blog now by going to the “Design” menu, then selecting “Template Designer.” Even if you don’t have a blog — or weren’t planning to redecorate the one you have — you can try out the Blogger Template Designer and play around with potential designs. If you like one, you can apply it to a new blog or to an existing blog.

If you want to learn more on how the Blogger Template Designer can help you create your own unique blog designs, watch our video and check out the Blogger Buzz blog.

Posted by Chang Kim, Blogger Product Manager
8:19
FIFA.com and Google team up to help fans celebrate the 2010 FIFA World Cup™
» ‎ Official Google Blog

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The 2010 FIFA World Cup has kicked off in South Africa. During the month-long tournament, millions of fans around the world will follow the games.

To mark the event, FIFA.com, the world’s official football website, and Google have collaborated on a range of online features to help supporters keep track of how each team is doing throughout the tournament. Whether you’re searching for FIFA World Cup news or want to voice your opinion on a player’s performance, we have a number of ways for fans to stay on top of the action:

Follow your team while browsing the Internet: stay up-to-date when you’re online with the FIFA.com Chrome extension. Get a live feed of FIFA World Cup results, news and match statistics and if you’re supporting a particular team, personalise the gadget for alerts of goals scored by your team as they happen.

See the latest scores and schedules in search results: search for [world cup], [world cup spain], [world cup group g] and more, and you’ll see live scores, latest results and match schedules at the top of your search results. You’ll find quick links to game recaps, live updates, standings and team profiles on FIFA.com.

Follow the tournament on your personalised home page: get all the latest information on FIFA World Cup teams, players and matches streamed to your very own home page with the iGoogle Gadget. If you want to know more about where all the action is happening, click on the ‘venues’ tab to take a closer look at the stadiums.

Get a feel for what it’s like to be there: FIFA.com and South African Tourism have used Google Maps to add information about the host cities, stadiums and attractions, giving people easy access to these sights with Street View and 3D views: maps.google.com/exploresouthafrica

You can get access to all of these features from FIFA.com and Google by visiting google.com/worldcup

Good luck to all, and may the best team win!

Posted by Obi Felten, Director of Consumer Marketing-EMEA, & Yonca Brunini, Marketing Director, Southern & Eastern Europe, Middle East & Africa
7:30
Kicking around search trends for the World Cup
» ‎ Official Google Blog

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If you’re a certain type of sports fan, you’ve been waiting four years to get to June 11, 2010—the kick-off of the World Cup and 30 days of football (soccer to some of us) madness, with 64 matches played by 32 teams from around the world.

As we’ve done before, we took a look at the search data using tools like Google Insights for Search—as well as some internal resources—to see what we could uncover about the upcoming tournament and its global audience. Search patterns can truly reflect the “pulse” of the world, and we found that the pulse of World Cup fever is beating strong as millions of fans hold tight to the hope that their team will make history as the 2010 champion.

It’s often said that football is a global sport, and that’s certainly true in search. Searches for [world cup 2010], [copa mundial] and [월드 컵] are all spiking, although overall World Cup buzz seems to be off to a slower start in 2010 than in the months leading up to the 2006 tournament, based on global trends for queries like [world cup] and [fifa world cup]. India is the #1 country searching for [fifa world cup schedule], [fifa 2010 schedule] and similar queries. And as the match-up between anglophone rivals England and USA approaches, searches for [england world cup] continue to far surpass interest in [usa world cup].

Most of us will be watching the matches on TV in pubs and living rooms, but a few lucky spectators will get to watch in person in South Africa. Searches for [world cup tickets] peaked in mid-April, and have since declined. But whether home or abroad, we’re all searching for the best way to show support for our team. Searches for [world cup decoration] have risen, and a glimpse at the Dutch shows queries for [oranje versiering] (“orange decoration”; orange is the Netherland’s national color) and [orange] have risen sharply for the last three months, as they have in 2006 and 2008 for the World Cup and European Cup.

All eyes—and hopes—are now hanging on the football stars who will be dribbling, passing and scoring for their countries. In search, the winning player is already clear: Cristiano Ronaldo, the Portuguese team captain and talented forward.

But many others are also being closely watched, especially the handful of players who have been injured in the days leading up to the start of the tournament. Queries on the Ivory Coast’s [drogba], England’s [rooney], Germany’s [ballack] and Italy's [pirlo] have all spiked in this fashion. And the Netherlands is apparently far more concerned about Arjen Robben's injury than their national elections. In the days leading up to the June 9 elections, between four and five times as many searches were done for [robben] than either of the two popular candidates [wilders] or [balkenende].

We’ll be back throughout the next month to highlight more search trends from the World Cup. In the meantime, you can explore trends on your own using Google Trends and Google Insights for Search, or see what topics other fans are discussing with the "Updates" mode and other search tools in the left panel of your Google search results page.

Posted by Jaime Forman-Lau, Consumer Operations Strategist

June 10, 2010
18:30
iPhone 4, AT&T 3G MicroCell, Fastest Mobile Networks, NTFS for OS X, Super Dorm Room Sound System, Cleaning The PS3, You Hate IR Keyboards! - Tekzilla
» ‎ Tekzilla (High Definition Quicktime)

Enclosure: [download]

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Tired of standing on the roof to get a signal? Check out AT&T's 3G MicroCell! Which carrier has The Fastest Mobile Wireless Nationwide? Advice on Building The Ultimate Dorm Room Sound System. Cleaning The PS3 Fat: should you crack it? Your picks for Wireless HTPC Controls!

1:01
Join us in the Firefox Cup!
» ‎ The Mozilla Blog » Mozilla News

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The world’s largest football tournament will kick off this week with plenty of opportunity to celebrate. Ever worn a team jersey, painted team colors on your face in support or waved a flag from your car after a victory? There is another way to express your team spirit, and it doesn’t involve paint or fabric – just your Firefox Web browser!

Firefox is the most customizable browser in the world. With Firefox Cup Personas (easy-to-use backgrounds that let you personalize the look of Firefox) you can customize your browser and show your team spirit.

Being in front of your computer doesn’t mean you have to miss out on all the action, you can participate with the Firefox Cup . By wearing one of these 32 Personas to support your team, you’ll take part in the global Firefox Cup competition. On the Firefox Cup website, you can easily see how many “fans” each team has (i.e., how many people are wearing each team Persona on their Firefox). The team with the most fans will win the Firefox Cup!

We’ll announce round winners on the following dates:
- June 16th: Round 1
- June 23rd: Round 2
- June 30th: Round 3
- July 7th: Round 4
- July 14th: Overall country winner announced!
You can also stay on top of scores and news within your Firefox browser with the FootieFox add-on. No matter where you are in the world or your time zone, you can catch all the action and support your team with the Firefox Cup!

The winning country will be showcased on Mozilla’s sites and more, so be sure to cast your vote by wearing your favorite country’s Persona today.

For more information, see:

June 09, 2010
22:07
The art of a homepage
» ‎ Official Google Blog

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Last week, we announced a new feature that lets you add a favorite photo or image to the background of your Google.com homepage.

To provide you with an extra bit of inspiration, we‘ve collaborated with several well-known artists, sculptors and photographers to create a gallery of background images you can use to personalize your Google homepage. Included in the collection are photographs of the works of Dale Chihuly, Jeff Koons, Tom Otterness, Polly Apfelbaum, Kengo Kuma (隈研吾), Kwon, Ki-soo (권기수) and Tord Boontje, as well as some incredible photos from Yann Arthus-Bertrand and National Geographic. We’ll be featuring these images as backgrounds on the Google homepage over the next 24 hours.

Of course, since we want your Google homepage to be personal to you, you can still choose an image or photo from your computer or your own Picasa Web Album. Whether you select an image from our new artist collection or prefer to have a more personal touch on your homepage, you’ll still enjoy the speed and ease of use that you’ve come to expect from Google.

Niijima Floats, Dale Chihuly
Yann Arthus-Bertrand, GoodPlanet Foundation
We’re also excited to announce that this feature is now available internationally. We hope you enjoy the new artist collection and making Google feel more like your own!

Update June 10, 11:31AM: Last week, we launched the ability to set an image of users’ choosing as the background for the Google homepage. Today, we ran a special “doodle” that showcased this functionality by featuring a series of images as the background for our homepage. We had planned to run an explanation of the showcase alongside it—in the form of a link on our homepage. Due to a bug, the explanatory link did not appear for most users. As a result, many people thought we had permanently changed our homepage, so we decided to stop today’s series early. We appreciate your feedback and patience as we experiment and iterate.

Posted by Marissa Mayer, VP Search Products & User Experience

Permalink for 'Episode 222: The iPhone 4 Cometh!, Safari 5's Pros and Cons, Digg is Dead?!?, Facebook and the Low-Hanging Fruit, and more... '

13:02

Episode 222: The iPhone 4 Cometh!, Safari 5's Pros and Cons, Digg is Dead?!?, Facebook and the Low-Hanging Fruit, and more...

» ‎ Cranky Geeks

June 08, 2010
18:00
Our new search index: Caffeine
» ‎ Official Google Blog

Tags: [edit]

(Cross-posted on the Webmaster Central Blog)
Today, we're announcing the completion of a new web indexing system called Caffeine. Caffeine provides 50 percent fresher results for web searches than our last index, and it's the largest collection of web content we've offered. Whether it's a news story, a blog or a forum post, you can now find links to relevant content much sooner after it is published than was possible ever before.

Some background for those of you who don't build search engines for a living like us: when you search Google, you're not searching the live web. Instead you're searching Google's index of the web which, like the list in the back of a book, helps you pinpoint exactly the information you need. (Here's a good explanation of how it all works.)

So why did we build a new search indexing system? Content on the web is blossoming. It's growing not just in size and numbers but with the advent of video, images, news and real-time updates, the average webpage is richer and more complex. In addition, people's expectations for search are higher than they used to be. Searchers want to find the latest relevant content and publishers expect to be found the instant they publish.

To keep up with the evolution of the web and to meet rising user expectations, we've built Caffeine. The image below illustrates how our old indexing system worked compared to Caffeine:

Our old index had several layers, some of which were refreshed at a faster rate than others; the main layer would update every couple of weeks. To refresh a layer of the old index, we would analyze the entire web, which meant there was a significant delay between when we found a page and made it available to you.

With Caffeine, we analyze the web in small portions and update our search index on a continuous basis, globally. As we find new pages, or new information on existing pages, we can add these straight to the index. That means you can find fresher information than ever before—no matter when or where it was published.

Caffeine lets us index web pages on an enormous scale. In fact, every second Caffeine processes hundreds of thousands of pages in parallel. If this were a pile of paper it would grow three miles taller every second. Caffeine takes up nearly 100 million gigabytes of storage in one database and adds new information at a rate of hundreds of thousands of gigabytes per day. You would need 625,000 of the largest iPods to store that much information; if these were stacked end-to-end they would go for more than 40 miles.

We've built Caffeine with the future in mind. Not only is it fresher, it's a robust foundation that makes it possible for us to build an even faster and comprehensive search engine that scales with the growth of information online, and delivers even more relevant search results to you. So stay tuned, and look for more improvements in the months to come.

Posted by Carrie Grimes, Software Engineer
16:35
Woody and Buzz star in a Google Search Story
» ‎ Official Google Blog

Tags: [edit]

Hopefully some of you have seen one or two of our Search Story videos. We’ve been blown away by the creativity and brilliance of everyone that shared their own search story using the Search Stories Video Creator. It’s been a pleasure to see how all kinds of people use search to tell tales—whether silly, inspiring, true or imagined.

It seemed like the next logical step was to ask the world’s best storytellers to get involved, so I called up my friend at Pixar. He liked the idea, the writers at Pixar were into it—and a few days later, we were brainstorming with the minds behind WALL-E, Finding Nemo and, of course, Toy Story. We’re huge fans of their work, so getting to explore what the Toy Story gang would discover using Google has been pretty special. Together, we ended up creating a short video that looks at Google through the eyes of Andy’s toys and how they deal with the fact that Andy’s about to leave for college.

A big thank you to the nice folks at Pixar for their spirit and their sense of collaboration. Check it out now online and in theaters nationwide kicking off Toy Story 3, opening June 18.

We hope you enjoy watching it as much as we did making it.

Update 5:55PM: Clarified that the YouTube video is currently only available in the U.S.Update Jun 10: Thanks for your patience! The video is now available outside the U.S. and we've removed our previous note about availability.

Posted by Robert Wong, Creative Director, Creative Lab

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Tekie Fix (20 unread)

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