(Cross-posted from the Gmail Blog ) Gmail voice and video chat makes it easy to stay in touch with friends and family using your computer’s microphone and speakers. But until now, this required both people to be at their computers, signed into Gmail at the same time. Given that most of us don’t spend all day in front of our computers, we thought, “wouldn’t it be nice if you could call people directly on their phones?” Starting today, you can call any phone right from Gmail. Calls to the U.S. and Canada will be free for at least the rest of the year and calls to other countries will be billed at our very low rates . We worked hard to make these rates really cheap (see comparison table ) with calls to the U.K., France, Germany, China, Japan—and many more countries—for as little as $0.02 per minute. Dialing a phone number works just like a normal phone. Just click “Call phone” at the top of your chat list and dial a number or enter a contact’s name. We’ve been testing this feature internally and have found it to be useful in a lot of situations, ranging from making a quick call to a restaurant, to placing a call when you’re in an area with bad reception. If you have a Google Voice phone number, calls made from Gmail will display this number as the outbound caller ID. And if you decide to, you can receive calls made to this number right inside Gmail (see instructions ). We’re rolling out this feature to U.S. based Gmail users over the next few days, so you’ll be ready to get started once “Call Phones” shows up in your chat list (you will need to install the voice and video plug-in if you haven’t already). If you’re not a U.S. based user—or if you’re using Google Apps for your school or business—then you won’t see it quite yet. We’re working on making this available more broadly—so stay tuned! For more information, visit gmail.com/call . Posted by Robin Schriebman, Software Engineer

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Call phones from Gmail

(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

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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

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

Computer science is a tough field to teach, especially at the high school level. Not only do you need to persuade teenagers that coding isn’t too geeky to attempt, but since CS is a growing field, it’s hard for teachers to keep up with all the latest techniques and computing tools. To help teachers face these challenges, we’re funding a program called Computer Science for High School ( CS4HS ). CS4HS is a workshop for high school and middle school computer science teachers that introduces new and exciting concepts in computing and how to teach them. The ultimate goals are to “train the trainer,” develop a thriving community of high school CS teachers, and spread the word about the awe and beauty of computing. This summer, we’re funding 20 workshops at colleges across the U.S. and will sponsor another 14 in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. If each workshop in the U.S. has an average of 20 teachers in attendance, and each of them teaches 90 students in a year*, that means that the workshops have the potential to make a difference for 36,000 students—an important start. We had the chance to attend a CS4HS workshop in our own backyard this week. UC Berkeley’s CS4HS highlighted hands-on skills that teachers can take directly back to the classroom. Twenty local math and CS teachers had a chance to share tips and best practices around teaching CS, and created a solid foundation for a community. One of the most popular sessions over the two days was a demo of Scratch , a popular programming language geared towards K-12 students that makes it easy to create interactive stories, animations, games, music and art. Attendees also had the opportunity to form the Golden Gate chapter of the Computer Science Teacher Association (CSTA). Although the summer workshops are just getting started, they’re already making a difference for teachers. Emmanuel Onyeador, who teaches AP CS at Oakland Technical High School, told us: “CS4HS is the missing link—as computer science teachers, you find yourself isolated in your classroom. When I sit here I find that we’re all talking about the same issues and the same type of students. What I bring back to my classroom will make a big difference.” You can view a list of all 20 U.S. CS4HS workshops and find more information about the program at www.cs4hs.com . UC Berkeley CS4HS participant s *according to the National Center for Education Statistics, U.S. Department of Education Posted by Mary Radomile, Education Program Manager

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CS4HS: helping high school teachers reach their potential

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

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Easier sharing in Google Docs

This is part of a regular series of Google Apps updates that we post every couple of weeks. Look for the label “ Google Apps highlights ” and subscribe to the series. - Ed. Over the last couple of weeks we continued to improve the new versions of Google documents and spreadsheets , introduced some features to Gmail and made it easier for businesses and schools to switch to Google Apps. Advanced sorting in Google spreadsheets We added some powerful data sorting controls to the new version of Google spreadsheets . Rather than sorting an entire worksheet by values in a single column, you can now sort any range of cells and sort by the contents of multiple columns. Formula highlighting in Google spreadsheets We also made it easier to write formulas in the new version of Google spreadsheets by adding visual indicators to show which cells a particular formula references. These color-coded highlights will help you keep track of your formulas at a glance. This feature works with Google Chrome, Safari and Internet Explorer; Firefox support is coming soon. Improvements to Google documents The new version of Google documents also got a few upgrades last week, including improvements to make finding content in your documents, applying text styles and linking to sections within your documents with bookmarks faster and easier. “Move Icon Column” now in Gmail Labs Our set of experimental Gmail features has a new addition: the “ Move Icon Column ” Lab. This Labs feature moves the icons for messages with attachments, chats and calendar invitations from the right side of your inbox to the left, keeping those icons next to your stars. You can enable this feature and many others from the Labs tab under Gmail Settings . “Reshare” in Google Buzz As of last week, Google Buzz lets you reshare posts that you find interesting without having to copy and paste the original content. Just click the new “Reshare” link beneath public buzz posts, type up anything you want to add and click “Post.” You can choose to reshare publicly on the web or privately to a select group. Google Apps Migration for Microsoft Outlook® We offer an array of migration tools to help businesses and schools move email, calendar and contacts data from their old systems to Google’s cloud. Customers have used these utilities to migrate more than 2 billion email messages to Google’s cloud , and last week we introduced the new Google Apps Migration tool for Microsoft Outlook® . This is a new end-user tool that moves email, calendar and contact data from Outlook® profiles, PST files and Exchange accounts to Google Apps. Who’s gone Google? In the spirit of National Small Business Week , we recently profiled a few small businesses doing big things with Google Apps. Revenue Spark is using Google Apps to build up a global presence to help bring green technology products to market. Yola counts on Google Apps to help their business grow fluidly as they bring on more software developers and business employees around the world. Smart Furniture turned to Google Apps to free up precious resources, improve productivity and remove barriers to growth. These are just a few of the millions of businesses that have gone Google. If your company has a story to share, add yourself to the map ! We continue to see more and more schools beginning to use Google Apps as well. A warm welcome to Georgetown University McDonough School of Business , SUNY Oswego , Elon University , Anderson University and Oxford Brookes University . Posted by Jeremy Milo, Google Apps Marketing Manager

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Google Apps highlights – 6/4/2010

Growing up in the late seventies in Hell’s Kitchen in Manhattan, technology wasn’t really a part of my educational life. My teachers graded printouts and the idea of collaborating with my classmates on a project anytime, anywhere just wasn’t possible. Not to mention, we didn’t have a computer at home and working on the Internet was still a pipe dream for a middle schooler. Things have changed since I was in middle school of course, and there are people working hard to bring technology into classrooms to help students learn and teachers teach. Today Oregon is taking a huge step in that direction — they’re the first state to open up Google Apps for Education to public schools throughout the state. Starting today, the Oregon Department of Education will offer Google Apps to all the school districts in the state — helping teachers, staff and students use Gmail, Docs, Sites, Video, Groups and more within their elementary, middle and high schools. School funding has been hit hard over the past couple of years, and Oregon is no exception. This move is going to save the Department of Education $1.5 million per year — big bucks for a hurting budget. With Google Apps, students in Oregon can build websites or email teachers about a project. Their documents and email will live online in the cloud — so they’ll be able to work from a classroom or a computer lab, at home or at the city (or county) library. And instead of just grading a paper at the end of the process, Oregonian teachers can help students with their docs in real time, coaching them along the way. It’s critical that students learn how to use the kind of productivity technology they’ll need throughout their lives, and Oregon is helping students across the state do just that. It blows my mind to think about how far technology in the classroom has come since I was in school, and how far we still have to go to make sure kids in classrooms everywhere have access to these tech resources. Cloud computing tools like Google Apps are one way teachers, schools — and now a whole state — are addressing the issue. Oh, and alis volat propriis ? That’s the Oregon motto. It means “she flies by her own wings” — makes perfect sense for a state heading to the cloud. Posted by Jaime Casap, Google Apps Education Manager

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Alis volat propriis: Oregon’s bringing Google Apps to classrooms statewide

This is part of a regular series of Google Apps updates that we post every couple of weeks. Look for the label ” Google Apps highlights ” and subscribe to the series. - Ed. The Google Apps team has had another productive couple of weeks. We released a number of helpful new features, and were happy to welcome new customers to the future of computing. Upload any file to Google Docs Last Tuesday, we began rolling out the ability for you to upload any type of file to Google Docs , not just documents, spreadsheets, presentations and PDFs. This lets you access and share anything up to 250MB from the cloud. You get 1GB of storage for uploaded files for free, and you can purchase additional storage for file uploads. (Additional storage plans are coming soon for schools and businesses, too.) Google Apps Premier Edition customers can also use the Google Documents List Data API to programatically add files to Google Docs, and purchase third-party applications so employees can sync files between their computers and Google Docs. Default https access for Gmail In the past, you had the option to always use https encryption in Gmail to help protect your data as it travels between your browser and our servers. After evaluating the trade-offs between security and latency, as of last week https encryption is now the default in Gmail . If you trust your network’s security and want to disable always-on https for performance reasons, you can change your preferences in Gmail settings. Employees and students whose admins have not already defaulted their entire organizations to https will also see this option. The Gmail sign-in page will still always use https to help keep your password safe. Who’s gone Google? Sanmina-SCI is a leading Electronics Manufacturing Services (EMS) provider to many industries including the communications, medical, defense and aerospace, industrial and renewable energy sectors. Sanmina-SCI rigorously evaluated and smoothly deployed Google Apps to their multi-lingual, global workforce of 15,000 employees. Not only did Sanmina-SCI achieve significant cost savings over upgrading their outdated Microsoft Exchange environment, deploying Google Apps has resulted in better customer service, streamlined business processes and increased flexibility. We also witnessed a flurry of schools going Google after winter break. A very warm welcome to North Carolina State University , the Byron School District , Griffith University , Seattle Central Community College and Macquarie University ! If your school or business is ready to go Google too, take a look at our tips and best practices for deploying Google Apps . We hope these updates help you get even more from Google Apps. For details and the latest news in this area, check out the Google Apps Blog . Posted by Jeremy Milo, Google Apps Marketing Manager

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Google Apps highlights – 1/22/2010

(Cross-posted on the Google Students Blog ) It’s always tough to bid farewell to summer and hit the books again, but for a few million students this back-to-school season, things are looking up. As of this fall, over five million students at thousands of schools in more than 145 countries have ” gone Google ” and are actively using Google Apps Education Edition on campus. Since this time last year the number of students using Google Apps on campus has increased by 400%. Because more schools sign up for Apps everyday, we wanted to celebrate the start of the 2009 school year by launching a new site that shows off some of these schools, provides product tips and tricks, introduces a community discussion forum and more. A snapshot of some of the thousands of schools “going Google” this fall. Every location in green indicates Apps users . When you visit the site, you’ll also find an interactive map packed with interesting trivia. For example, in addition to the 70,000 students using Apps at Temple University, their 5,000 staff and faculty were given a choice between Gmail and alternative vendor, and over 90% chose to go Google. Or when Kent State first deployed, they saw more than 700 students migrating each hour. And a single admin at Montana State successfully deployed over 30,000 accounts in less than 90 days. Or as we learned in the recent webinar from another school on the map — Notre Dame — they saved $1.5 million by switching to Apps. You can hear their full story in this video: We hope more schools will continue to go Google and bring Apps to their campuses in an effort to improve communication and collaboration while cutting costs and resources. In the meantime, check out our site and find out what Apps has done for other schools and what Apps can do for your school — and if you’re already a part of the movement, add yourself to the map ! Posted by Miriam Schneider and Jason Cook, Google Apps Education Edition team

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Five million students going back to school are "going Google"

[From time to time we invite guests to blog about initiatives of interest, and we are very pleased to have Harold Varmus join us here. Harold is the Chairman and Co-Founder of the Public Library of Science , a non-profit publisher of open access  journals committed to making scientific and medical research literature a freely accessible public resource. This announcement is also posted on the Public Library of Science website . – Ed.] The successful development of open access publishing by organizations including the Public Library of Science (PLoS) in recent years is a dramatic illustration of how the Internet is revolutionizing scientific communication. Today, after several months of work, I’m delighted to announce that PLoS is launching PLoS Currents (Beta) — a new and experimental website for the rapid communication of research results and ideas. In response to the recent worldwide H1N1 influenza outbreak, the first PLoS Currents research theme is influenza. PLoS Currents: Influenza , which we are launching today, is built on three key components: a small expert research community that PLoS is working with to run the website; Google Knol with new features that allow content to be gathered together in collections after being vetted by expert moderators; and a new, independent database at the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) called Rapid Research Notes , where research targeted for rapid communication, such as the content in PLoS Currents: Influenza will be freely and permanently accessible. To ensure that researchers are properly credited for their work, PLoS Currents content will also be given a unique identifier by the NCBI so that it is citable. PLoS Currents: Influenza welcomes contributions covering any and all aspects of research into influenza: influenza virology, genetics, immunity, structural biology, genomics, epidemiology, modeling, evolution, policy and control. Contributions might take the form of new datasets, preliminary analyses or entire manuscripts. The launch site already features new findings from some outstanding influenza researchers. To enable contributions to PLoS Currents: Influenza to be shared as rapidly as possible, they will not be subject to in-depth peer review; however, unsuitable submissions will be screened out by a board of expert moderators led by Eddie Holmes (Center for Infectious Disease Dynamics, Pennsylvania State University) and Peter Palese (Department of Microbiology, Mount Sinai School of Medicine). The key goal of PLoS Currents is to accelerate scientific discovery by allowing researchers to share their latest findings and ideas immediately with the world’s scientific and medical communities. Google Knol’s features for community interaction, comment and discussion will enable commentary and conversations to develop around these findings. Given that the contributions to PLoS Currents are not peer-reviewed in detail, however, the results and conclusions must be regarded as preliminary. In time, it is therefore likely that PLoS Currents contributors will submit their work for publication in a formal journal, and the PLoS Journals will welcome these submissions. PLoS Currents: Influenza is an experiment and a prototype for further PLoS Currents sites. It reflects our commitment to using online tools to the fullest extent possible for the open sharing of research results. As with any new project, we will be listening carefully to the reactions within and beyond the scientific and medical communities and welcoming suggestions for improvements. Posted by Harold Varmus, Chairman and Co-Founder, Public Library of Science

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A new website for the rapid sharing of influenza research