A couple months ago while visiting our London office, I noticed a really cool Google logo on the wall. It was a mosaic of photos of London that had been created by a product manager named Clay Bavor and a team of Googlers (in fact, Clay wrote about it ). As a few of us admired the wall, we thought there must be other Googlers who could create something equally cool and fun. So we cooked up a little contest for the product management team: create your own version of a “Googley Art Wall” and the team with the best entry wins a nice dinner out and a donation to the charity of its choice. When we announced the contest, we weren’t sure if we’d get enough entries to make it interesting. Within minutes of seeing the announcement, however, Lorraine Twohill (head of marketing) and Claire Hughes Johnson (head of online sales) both asked if it was OK for their teams to enter too. Soon Googlers from offices and teams around the world were doing their best to create beautiful, creative and Googley “art walls,” on small budgets and their own time. Seven weeks later, 23 teams from 12 offices across eight countries submitted videos and photographs of their work. The entries were so universally good that the judges couldn’t limit themselves to picking just one winner. The grand prize went to “Rubik’s Cubes galore!”, a giant Google doodle meticulously composed of 850 Rubik’s Cubes, created by practically the entire Taipei office. We also named four runners-up: from Mountain View, a “Periodic Table of Google Elements,” a colorful collection of facts and stats about Google and the Internet arranged as a giant periodic table; the “Google Paris Metro Station,” a Metro stop built right inside the Paris office; the “Shanghai interactive wall,” a magnetic wall with 63 moveable tiles; and in Dublin, the “Google FoosWall,” a super-sized foosball table with handmade players that spell Google. Watch the video to see the making of these winning walls, along with the finished products. People sometimes ask me to define “Googley.” Now I can just tell them to walk by any of the newly decorated walls (you should too, if you happen to visit a Google office). This is what happens when you give Googlers a little space—and paint guns, a wood shop, litter scraps from micro-kitchens, stained glass, LEDs, dried beans, colorful plastic balls, antique furniture—or just about anything else they can get their hands on, apparently. They create incredible things. Posted by Jonathan Rosenberg, Senior Vice President, Product Management

View post:
23 walls of Googley

(Cross-posted from the Lat Long Blog ) What do Alex Trebek, teachers and Googlers have in common? Last week, these individuals and groups all came together at the Googleplex in Mountain View, CA to celebrate exploration and learning. Google hosted its first Geo Teachers Institute, an intensive two-day workshop in which 150 educators received hands-on training and experience with Google Maps, Google SketchUp and Google Earth, including features like Mars, Moon and SkyMaps. Attendees from around the globe not only learned how these products work, but also discovered tips and resources for introducing these tools to students and using them to conceptualize, visualize, share and communicate about the world around them. Through this event, teachers were hopefully inspired to bring the world’s geographic information to students in compelling, fresh and fun ways. John Hanke, VP of Product Management, addressing the audience of educators As part of our continued effort to collaborate with teachers and help students get a better sense of places across the globe, we also announced that Google Earth Pro is now available to educators for free through the Google Earth for Educators site . Educators from higher educational and academic institutions who demonstrate a need for the Pro features in their classrooms can now apply for single licenses for themselves or site licenses for their computer labs. A similar program exists for SketchUp Pro through the Google SketchUp Pro Statewide License Grant , which is currently being provided via grants to 11 states, and available to all others at the K-12 level at no cost. In conjunction with these exciting Geo-related events and announcements, the Geo Education team also thought it’d be timely and fun to test Googlers’ geographic knowledge by hosting the company’s first ever Google Geo Bee. With help from National Geographic, 68 teams relived their school years and took a written geography exam, competing for a spot on stage with Alex Trebek, who hosted the main event. The competition was based on the group version of the National Geographic Bee for students, which Google has sponsored for the past two years. Questions included those like “Which country contains most of the Balkan Mountains, which mark the boundary between the historical regions of Thrace and Moesia?” and “Ben Nevis, the highest peak in the United Kingdom, is located in which mountain chain?” The winners of our Google Geo Bee: Ian Sharp, Marcus Thorpe and Rob Harford The final three Google teams (the Tea-Drinking Imperialists, the Geoids and the Titans) all showed off their geographic literacy and answered a plethora of diverse and complex questions. In the end, it was the Tea-Drinkers who emerged the winners when they figured out that Mecca was the answer to the clue, “Due to this city’s location on a desert trading route, many residents were merchants, the most famous of whom was born around A.D. 570.” And they didn’t just walk away with bragging rights; thanks to Sven Linblad from Linblad Expeditions , they also won an amazing adventure trip to either the Arctic, the Galapagos or Antarctica. Through all of these education efforts — for teachers, students and grown-up Googlers alike — we hope people of all ages never stop exploring. Posted by Tina Ornduff, Geo Education Team

View original here: 
Alex Trebek, teachers and Googlers unite at the Google Geo Teachers Institute

(Cross-posted from the Lat Long Blog ) What do Alex Trebek, teachers and Googlers have in common? Last week, these individuals and groups all came together at the Googleplex in Mountain View, CA to celebrate exploration and learning. Google hosted its first Geo Teachers Institute, an intensive two-day workshop in which 150 educators received hands-on training and experience with Google Maps, Google SketchUp and Google Earth, including features like Mars, Moon and SkyMaps. Attendees from around the globe not only learned how these products work, but also discovered tips and resources for introducing these tools to students and using them to conceptualize, visualize, share and communicate about the world around them. Through this event, teachers were hopefully inspired to bring the world’s geographic information to students in compelling, fresh and fun ways. John Hanke, VP of Product Management, addressing the audience of educators As part of our continued effort to collaborate with teachers and help students get a better sense of places across the globe, we also announced that Google Earth Pro is now available to educators for free through the Google Earth for Educators site . Educators from higher educational and academic institutions who demonstrate a need for the Pro features in their classrooms can now apply for single licenses for themselves or site licenses for their computer labs. A similar program exists for SketchUp Pro through the Google SketchUp Pro Statewide License Grant , which is currently being provided via grants to 11 states, and available to all others at the K-12 level at no cost. In conjunction with these exciting Geo-related events and announcements, the Geo Education team also thought it’d be timely and fun to test Googlers’ geographic knowledge by hosting the company’s first ever Google Geo Bee. With help from National Geographic, 68 teams relived their school years and took a written geography exam, competing for a spot on stage with Alex Trebek, who hosted the main event. The competition was based on the group version of the National Geographic Bee for students, which Google has sponsored for the past two years. Questions included those like “Which country contains most of the Balkan Mountains, which mark the boundary between the historical regions of Thrace and Moesia?” and “Ben Nevis, the highest peak in the United Kingdom, is located in which mountain chain?” The winners of our Google Geo Bee: Ian Sharp, Marcus Thorpe and Rob Harford The final three Google teams (the Tea-Drinking Imperialists, the Geoids and the Titans) all showed off their geographic literacy and answered a plethora of diverse and complex questions. In the end, it was the Tea-Drinkers who emerged the winners when they figured out that Mecca was the answer to the clue, “Due to this city’s location on a desert trading route, many residents were merchants, the most famous of whom was born around A.D. 570.” And they didn’t just walk away with bragging rights; thanks to Sven Linblad from Linblad Expeditions , they also won an amazing adventure trip to either the Arctic, the Galapagos or Antarctica. Through all of these education efforts — for teachers, students and grown-up Googlers alike — we hope people of all ages never stop exploring. Posted by Tina Ornduff, Geo Education Team

More: 
Alex Trebek, teachers and Googlers unite at the Google Geo Teachers Institute

This year we held the third edition of the Google Online Marketing Challenge — a global university competition that gives students hands-on exposure to online marketing. Each team receives the equivalent of $200 to work with a local company and create an online marketing campaign. Teams have three weeks to mastermind a strategy before submitting a campaign report to an international judging panel of professors. We’re delighted that 3,034 teams from 60 countries participated in the 2010 Challenge, representing an increase of 39 percent from last year and making the Challenge one of the world’s largest university competitions. The global winners of the Challenge are Lauren Williams, Ganesh Chaudhari, Jeeana Atmarow, Allison Miller, Mohammed Assiri and Hui Min Chua from the University of Western Australia, who promoted the kids’ novel The Adventures of Charlie & Moon . Over the three week campaign, the novel’s website saw a huge jump in visits—nearly 800 percent. The team will visit the Googleplex in Mountain View, California and each of the members will receive a laptop for their great performance in the Challenge. We also had three regional winners: for the Americas, the winning team comes from Carnegie Mellon University in the U.S. and a team from the Warsaw School of Economics in Poland won in EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa). In the Asia Pacific region, the winners come from the Edith Cowan University in Perth, Australia. Find more details about our winners here . Since we first held it in 2008, the Google Online Marketing Challenge has grown each year, allowing thousands of students globally to learn about online advertising and help small businesses to improve their online presence. The education they’ve already received becomes real in the Challenge: real money, real campaigns, real businesses and real results. And the hands-on experience with online marketing gives them real skills they can use in their careers. If you’re interested in competing in the 2011 Challenge, register now. We’ll open the sign-up period in the fall. Posted by Alex Gibelalde, Product Marketing Manager

The rest is here: 
Announcing the winners of the Google Online Marketing Challenge 2010

Most days, I bike to work. No spandex, no special shoes; just me and my cruiser (and a basket on the back for my laptop). It’s about 4.5 miles door to door. Now, I give mad props to the folks who bike from San Francisco to Google every week. But biking to work is for regular folks, too. It feels great: the exercise, the fresh air and doing something “green”, all while giving my brain time to warm up for — or decompress after — a hectic work day. So how can we get more people who live right around Google offices to get off their good intentions and on to their bikes? Well, we did recently release biking directions on Google Maps (including on mobile phones !) but in case that wasn’t enough motivation, there’s no better time to try than on Bike to Work Day! We celebrated Bay Area Bike to Work Day this past Thursday at Google’s HQ (as usual, Northern California’s date was ahead of U.S. National Bike to Work Day ). The rest of our offices will take up the bike-commuting cause at the end of this week and into next week, from Bangalore to Zurich. Last year, 42 Google offices participated in Bike to Work Day — and we hope to top that this time around. To prepare for Bay Area Bike to Work day, our employees hosted a How to Bike to Work tech talk and volunteered time at a free bike repair clinic . Those Googlers repaired over 40 bikes in 2.5 hours — not bad for an all-volunteer outfit. And we had a whole pile of volunteer group ride leaders plan to lead 20 different rides in from all over the Bay, to help folks get to work safely and in style. Last year, we aimed for 1,000 riders globally, and beat that handily (1,322 riders total). So we decided to raise the stakes and shoot for 1,000 in Northern California alone. And we did it: 1,019 riders to our Mountain View, San Bruno, and San Francisco offices. That’s a new record for Google and almost five percent of our total employee population! The longest ride was 71 miles…from Palo Alto. ( Via Pescadero . That’s what we call taking the loooong route.) The Santa Cruz crew came straight in and went 55 miles one way…and some of them were talking about biking home, too! 172 Googlers came in from San Francisco — but thanks to Google’s extensive shuttle system, most of them can get a lift back home. The largest turnout came from Mountain View, of course — 272 folks came from right around the ‘plex. Considering more riders came from SF than Mountain View last year, our super-locals had some pride to win back! For me, the highlights included free massages , furry friends , tiny companions , a skeleton , a unicycle and the Warp Speed Conference Bike team who rode a 400+lb contraption all the way in from Redwood City. (Witness also the classiest bike jersey ever .) Oh, and seeing our smiling CFO check in, who biked in even though it was Shareholder Day on campus! Not to mention a certain founder with his solar-panel backpack. But the real joy was hearing all the people who said, “You know, I never thought I could do it. But it wasn’t so hard after all! I will definitely do it again.” That’s what Bike to Work Day is all about. Overall, we had tons of fun spreading the bike-commute love here in Mountain View, and we can’t wait to see what our fellow Googlers get up to all around the world. Maybe we’ll even hit our stretch goal: 2010 riders in 2010! In the meantime, check out our photos from Thursday’s party-on-wheels to get psyched for your own ride to work. Posted by Deb Henigson, Workplace Services Program Manager

Read more:
Celebrating Bike to Work Day(s)

Today, Earth Day turns 40 and is now celebrated in more than 198 countries . Here at Google, we’ll be focusing on one of the planet’s more enjoyable aspects: its food. (Though, to be fair, we’re always focused on food around here). Our offices are hosting farmers markets, planting herb gardens, hosting talks on sustainable cooking and much more. At our Mountain View headquarters, we’re enjoying solar cooking demonstrations, classes on composting and local food sourcing, distribution of reusable shopping bags and discussions on healthy cooking and eating. We’re also hosting a speaker from The Nature Conservancy and giving tours of our on-site 1.6MW solar panel installation and the 400kW Bloom Energy fuel cells. Today is also Take Your Child to Work Day, so we have plenty of kid-friendly activities centered around healthy, sustainable habits to complement the bounce house, movies and games. The focus on food is not limited to Mountain View. Our Dublin office is removing all disposable cups, Stockholm is running a special Earth Day food menu in their cafe, Wroclaw employees are planting seeds and Amsterdam is overhauling its salad bar with organic offerings. And the cafe in our London office is sourcing all of its food from within 50 miles of the office, as well as organizing a bike-to-work effort coordinated with Google Maps . Beyond food, we’ve been busy with a number of other Earth-related initiatives. Last month, Google Maps biking directions launched in the U.S. and we hope that having these directions on hand will help you find less carbon-intensive ways to commute to work or meet friends. Just the other week we added a new feature in Google Finance that reports companies’ carbon disclosure rating from the CDProject. Oh, and don’t forget about the new kids on the block . If you’re looking to make a difference, check for local efforts or make a pledge to have an impact. We’re working to minimize our own carbon footprint, and hope that you’ll take a moment today to consider how you can make a positive impact on our planet. Posted by Austin Rachlin, Green Business Operations

Originally posted here: 
Eating our way through Earth Day

Are you ready for a Google Analytics Master class , happening Tuesday, 9 March in Singapore and again on Thursday March 11 in Kuala Lumpur ? We bet you are, and we bet, as seekers of data and truth, you ask, what makes it a Master class? And why so far away from Mountain View, CA? Well, you know how proud we are of how global Google Analytics has become . But this is a special class because it’s run by the Google Analytics and Website Optimizer team in Southeast Asia, spearheaded by the excellent Vinoaj Vijeyakumaar , Customer Solutions Engineer, Google Southeast Asia, who manages the Southeast Asia blog . He’s an engineer’s engineer, and has organized a great day of sessions, including a keynote by Beth Liebert , Google Analytics product manager here in Mountain View who led the Google Analytics Intelligence launch, among other great features. There will be a session on Website Optimizer of course, and a full day of talks by both specialists on the Google team both from here in Mountain View and also from Southeast Asia, as well as local partners who have great case studies from the region and techniques anyone can, and should, use. Take a look at the agenda and register if you’re in the area. It will be worth the time. Singapore: https://sites.google.com/site/analyticsmasterclass/singapore Kuala Lumpur : https://sites.google.com/site/analyticsmasterclass/malaysia Posted by Jeff Gillis , Google Analytics Team

More here: 
Master Class In Singapore And Kuala Lumpur

Imagine sitting in a rural health clinic, streaming three-dimensional medical imaging over the web and discussing a unique condition with a specialist in New York. Or downloading a high-definition, full-length feature film in less than five minutes. Or collaborating with classmates around the world while watching live 3-D video of a university lecture. Universal, ultra high-speed Internet access will make all this and more possible. We’ve urged the FCC to look at new and creative ways to get there in its National Broadband Plan – and today we’re announcing an experiment of our own. We’re planning to build and test ultra high-speed broadband networks in a small number of trial locations across the United States. We’ll deliver Internet speeds more than 100 times faster than what most Americans have access to today with 1 gigabit per second, fiber-to-the-home connections. We plan to offer service at a competitive price to at least 50,000 and potentially up to 500,000 people. Our goal is to experiment with new ways to help make Internet access better and faster for everyone. Here are some specific things that we have in mind: Next generation apps : We want to see what developers and users can do with ultra high-speeds, whether it’s creating new bandwidth-intensive “killer apps” and services, or other uses we can’t yet imagine. New deployment techniques : We’ll test new ways to build fiber networks, and to help inform and support deployments elsewhere, we’ll share key lessons learned with the world. Openness and choice : We’ll operate an “open access” network, giving users the choice of multiple service providers. And consistent with our past advocacy , we’ll manage our network in an open, non-discriminatory and transparent way. Like our WiFi network in Mountain View , the purpose of this project is to experiment and learn. Network providers are making real progress to expand and improve high-speed Internet access, but there’s still more to be done. We don’t think we have all the answers – but through our trial, we hope to make a meaningful contribution to the shared goal of delivering faster and better Internet for everyone. As a first step, today we’re putting out a request for information (RFI) to help identify interested communities. We welcome responses from local government, as well as members of the public. If you’d like to respond, visit this page to learn more, or check out our video: We’ll collect responses until March 26, and will announce our target communities later this year. Stay tuned. Posted by Minnie Ingersoll and James Kelly, Product Managers

Originally posted here: 
Think big with a gig: Our experimental fiber network

Late last year we released the Social Search experiment to make search more personal with relevant web content from your friends and online contacts. We were excited by the number of people who chose to try it out, and today Social Search is available to everyone in beta on google.com. We’ve been having a lot of fun with Social Search. It’s baby season here on our team — two of us just had little ones, and a third is on the way. We’re all getting ready to be parents for the first time and we have lots of questions. So, what do we do? We search Google, of course! With Social Search, when we search for [baby sleep patterns], [swaddling] or [best cribs], not only do we get the usual websites with expert opinions, we also find relevant pages from our friends and contacts. For example, if one of my friends has written a blog where he talks about a great baby shop he found in Mountain View, this might appear in my social results. I could probably find other reviews, but my friend’s blog is more relevant because I know and trust the author. While we’ve been enjoying Social Search (and having babies), we’ve been hard at work on new features. For example, we’ve added social to Google Images . Now when you’re doing a search on Images, you may start seeing pictures from people in your social circle. These are pictures that your friends and other contacts have published publicly to the web on photo-sharing sites like Picasa Web Albums and Flickr. Just like the other social results, social image results appear under a special heading called “Results from your social circle.” Here’s what it looks like: Looking at the screenshot, you may notice two new links for “My social circle” and “My social content.” These links will take you to a new interface we’ve added where you can see the connections and content behind your social results. Clicking on “My social circle” shows your extended network of online contacts and how you’re connected. Clicking on “My social content” lists your public pages that might appear in other people’s social results. This new interface should give you a peek under the hood of how Social Search builds your social circle and connects you with web content from your friends and extended network. You can check out your social circle directly by visiting this link . (Note that it may take some time for the connections and content to update.) We think there’s tremendous potential for social information to improve search, and we’re just beginning to scratch the surface. We’re leaving a “beta” label on social results because we know there’s a lot more we can do. If you want to get the most out of Social Search right away, get started by creating a Google profile , where you can add links to your other public online social services. Check out this short video to learn more: The new features are rolling out now on google.com in English for all signed-in users, and you should start seeing them in the next few days. Time to socialize! Posted by Maureen Heymans, Technical Lead for Social Search, and Terran Melconian, Technical Lead for Social Image Search

Read the rest here:
Search is getting more social

Last week, we hosted the the final round of Google Code Jam 2009 , the sixth iteration of our annual global programming competition. From almost 23,000 registrants in the beginning, we winnowed down the contestants to the fastest and most fervent coders. On Friday, we brought the top 23 competitors to our Mountain View headquarters for four concentrated hours of thinking, testing and trouble-shooting. The competition platform, built as a 20% project by a group of Google engineers, was powered by Google App Engine and allowed the contestants to use the programming language of their choice. These diverse finalists represented 15 different countries across Europe, Asia and the Americas. The contestants were confronted by six puzzles. In one, they had to take on the role of a telecommunications company upgrading some of its equipment. The company wants to upgrade its most profitable cell towers; however, doing so might force them to upgrade less profitable towers as well — at a high cost. The contestants were charged with figuring out which towers to upgrade, to maximize gains and minimize costs. The competitors used their coding skills to figure out the most efficient solution as quickly as possible. Last year’s champion, Tiancheng Lou of China, code-named ACRush, once again took top honors and the $5,000 grand prize. Qi Zichao of China won second place, and Iwata Yoichi of Japan came in third. For a glimpse into this year’s Code Jam take look at the video below, courtesy of NBC. And to all the coders out there, we hope to see you next year — start practicing now! Posted by Bartholomew Furrow, 20% Tech Lead for Google Code Jam

See the rest here: 
And the Google Code Jam 2009 champion is…