Knols are authoritative articles about specific topics, written by people who know about those subjects. Since the start of the project, we've seen articles written on everything from sinus infections and Arctic exploration to long distance motorcycle riding and the Amphilinidea.
The Knol interface is now available in eight languages (Arabic, English, French, German, Italian, Korean, Portuguese and Spanish) and we are excited that our users are helping us translate it into many more languages using the Google in Your Language console. Encouraging people to contribute their knowledge online is particularly important for languages with limited web content, and we are glad to see that knols have been written in 59 different languages to date. It has been very exciting to have people all over the world come forward to help improve online content in their language.
We have worked quickly to incorporate the features most requested by our early authors, such as usage stats showing reader activity on knols and rich media embedding (videos, spreadsheets, forms, slideshows, etc.). All of these improvements are tracked in our Announcement and Release Notes.
We are happy to see that most authors choose to accept moderated edits from their audience and that the volume of suggested edits from readers is steadily growing. So if you find yourself reading a knol and want to suggest an improvement, go ahead and press that edit button! You will be able to make the desired changes directly in the knol, and the author(s) will be able to review and act upon your suggestions. We look forward to seeing this new mode of online collaboration used more widely.
People visit Knol from 197 countries and territories on an average day, from the Aland Islands and Antarctica to Zambia and Zimbabwe. We welcome you to share your knowledge with the world and write a knol.
Building engineers
1/16/2009 10:46:00 AM
We believe great ideas can come from anywhere and everyone. And we aspire to be an organization that reflects global diversity, because we know that a world's worth of perspectives, ideas and cultures leads to the creation of better products and services. We have more than a dozen employee-driven resource groups, from Gayglers to GWE (Google Women Engineers), that actively participate around the world in building community and driving policy at Google. This is the next post in our Interface series, which takes a look at valuing people's similarities and differences in the workplace. For more information on how Google fosters an inclusive work environment, visit Life at Google on our Jobs site. – Ed.As someone who has been building technology for more than 15 years, I know firsthand what a positive impact building hardware or software with a small team in an agile environment can have. I was only exposed to this type of work during grad school, and have since been actively involved in getting young people interested in science and technology. This year Google has enthusiastically supported my initiative to bring a local group of girls closer to technology through the FIRST Robotics Competition.
"People claim that only with the perspective of years can you know how much influence a particular event has had on you," Tal Tzangen says and proceeds to explain how she is convinced her participation in the FIRST Robotics Competition last year has significantly changed the course of her life. Tal, a 17 year old girl from a rural part of Israel, was taking technology courses at her school, not because she was particularly interested in technology but because the other options seemed even less appealing to her. Although Israel is also known as "Silicon Wadi," Tal thought technology was "just for geeks." Last year she agreed to be a member of a newly forming FIRST team, not knowing what she was letting herself in for.
The competition involves 1,686 teams from more than 42,000 high schools spanning the U.S., Brazil, Canada, Chile, Germany, Israel, Mexico, the Netherlands, the Philippines, Turkey, and the U.K. Each team has six weeks to build a robot from a common kit of parts provided by FIRST. Then, they compete with other robots in a new game devised each year.
Before Tal knew it, she was "bit by the bug." During the weeks of preparation, she spent days and nights at school learning about robotics and teamwork with her peers and mentors. Her team had won the regional competitions and were seeking funding for the finals in Atlanta when I met her.
Tal, center, and her team members work on their robot's transmission system.
This year Tal is the captain of the Google-sponsored Thunderbolts team, and one of her goals has been to get as many girls involved as possible. As she puts it, "I certainly don't mind the company of my male peers, but I know that girls also have a lot to contribute in this domain." The current team includes 24 students, eight of them girls (last year there were only two). Recruiting girls has been challenging since there are very few in the technical track in high school. She has enlisted some pre-high school girls with the hope of serving as a role model to them. Likewise, she has encouraged the forming of a FIRST LEGO team (9-14 year olds) to ensure the "next generation" for the Robotics Competition.
The Thunderbolt team.
The world kickoff for this year's competition took place on January 3rd, followed by the Israeli kickoff the following day. Regardless of how far they get in the competition this year, Israel is a country where high tech, engineering, science and entrepreneurship thrive, and Tal and her Thunderbolts are a growing part of this culture.
Supporting equality
1/15/2009 05:00:00 PM
In September of last year, Google announced its opposition to California's Proposition 8. While the campaign was emotionally charged and difficult for both sides, in the wake of the election many were concerned with the impact Proposition 8 could have on the personal lives of people they work with every day, and on California's ability to attract and retain a diverse mix of employees from around the world.That's why we've signed an amicus brief (PDF file) in support of several cases currently challenging Proposition 8 in the California Supreme Court. Denying employees basic rights isn't right, and it isn't good for businesses. We are committed to preserving fundamental rights for every one of the people who work hard to make Google a success.
Please join us in continuing to fight for equality for all Californians.
Making your personalized homepage even more personal
1/15/2009 12:00:00 PM
The holidays have passed, but if you're anything like me, you've got a gold mine of bear hugs and embarrassing moments captured on film. My holidays wouldn't be the same without Tabby, our family cat, who has been part of the winter festivities for 10 years. Over the holidays, we caught Tabby sticking out his tongue at the family get-together! Below is one of those prized moments I wanted to post everywhere, including on my personalized homepage:
Now, you too can capture memories and images on your iGoogle homepage by building a custom theme. We've just released our new tool for creating iGoogle themes. It's an easy way for iGoogle users to spruce up their personalized homepage without needing to know how to use XML, etc. All you need is an image, and we'll provide the rest.
The theme-building tool has a simple interface for uploading your photo from your desktop, Picasa Web Album, or the web. Once you've chosen a photo, the builder provides a basic set of tools to help you create your theme:
- Image Cropping - Crop your favorite photo to fit your iGoogle theme
- Color Schemes - Pick colors to complement your photo
- Real-time Preview - See immediate feedback of your changes to swiftly fine-tune your theme
- Public and Private Publishing - Choose who gets to see your original themes, whether it's just you, or if you want to share them with the world
We hope you have fun customizing your iGoogle homepage with your favorite images, whether they're photos of your pets or places you've visited, drawings, designs, cartoons — or whatever else your heart desires.
Update on 1/16 @ 10:30 AM: A number of people are having trouble accessing our theme-builder tool. We're currently working on the issue, and we'll post here as soon as it's up and running again. We're sorry for the delay, and we'd like to thank everyone who let us know they had trouble accessing this feature.
Update on 1/22 @ 4:25 PM: Our theme-builder tool is now available to anyone in the U.S. who has their language default set to English, and we hope to release this feature in other languages and countries soon. Thanks for bearing with us, and we'll keep you posted on further updates.
Hear how Illinois State University uses Google Search
1/15/2009 11:02:00 AM
Search functionality is a critical part of higher education websites due to the diverse audiences that these sites serve. Current and prospective students, faculty, staff, alumni, and other communities come to these sites to seek a wide range of information. Even with the best navigational scheme, it is a challenge to make all of this information findable, which makes accurate search a huge boost to website effectiveness.Google Apps adoption in higher education has been steadily climbing (3 million users and counting), and we're really excited to see more and more universities using the Google Search Appliance (GSA) to power high-quality search on their websites. Like Google.com, the search appliance can search public pages on a website, but it can also find information in databases, content systems, business applications, and other sources, which opens up a whole range of options for making all kinds of information easily accessible. For example, Illinois State University uses the Google Search Appliance to create a "Course Finder" tool for their current and prospective students. This tool delivers up-to-the minute course information to more than 20,000 students, 1,000 faculty members, and the public at-large. It provides users with a friendly, easy-to-use interface for finding class and schedule data stored on the university's mainframe. Students can easily fine-tune searches to specify departments, time slots, and instructors, all using the familiar Google interface.
When Campus Technology, a leading publication addressing technology trends in universities, invited us to showcase the capabilities of the Google Search Appliance in an upcoming webinar, we immediately turned to our friends at Illinois State to share their great example. We invite you to join us online on Wednesday, January 21st, at 11:00 am PST, to hear Illinois State University talk about their experience with GSA. We'll also be sharing information about Google Apps for higher education, so if you're interested in that front, be sure to mark your calendars as well.
Changes to recruiting
1/14/2009 03:01:00 PM
As we made clear during our last quarterly earnings call in October, Google is still hiring but at a reduced rate. Given the state of the economy, we recognized that we needed fewer people focused on hiring.Our first step to address this was to wind down almost all our contracts with external contractors and vendors providing recruiting services for Google. However, after much consideration, we have with great regret decided that we need to go further and reduce the overall size of our recruiting organization by approximately 100 positions.
We know this change will be very difficult for the people concerned, and we hope that many of them will be able to find new roles at Google. They helped build this company, new hire by new hire, and we are enormously grateful for everything they have done.
Changes to engineering
1/14/2009 02:50:00 PM
At Google we recognized early on that branching out beyond Mountain View was key to building innovative products for users everywhere. That's why we put so much effort into hiring outstanding engineers in a wide mix of countries. Having offices distributed around the globe is critical to Google's long-term success, and today we have thousands of engineers working in 40 offices in more than 20 countries. It has enabled us to make significant improvements in our products and attract more users globally.It has also presented unique challenges. The most difficult of these being to coordinate our efforts across all geographies, and provide engineers with significant, meaningful projects that make a real difference to people's lives. Last September we asked engineers in Phoenix, Arizona to move to other offices, and the vast majority have done so. This move enabled us to build larger and more effective teams, reduce communication overhead, and give engineers increased options for future projects. Today we are doing the same thing in Austin, Texas; Trondheim, Norway; and Lulea, Sweden. Our strong desire is to keep as many of these 70 engineering employees at Google as possible. However, we do recognize the upheaval and heartache that these changes may have on Google families, and that we may not be able to keep 100% of these exceptional employees.
Our long-term goal is not to trim the number of people we have working on engineering projects or reduce our global presence, but create a smaller number of more effective engineering sites, which will ensure that innovation and speed remain at our core.
Make over your site using the wisdom of the crowd
1/14/2009 10:00:00 AM
It used to be that the design of a website was always left to a single web designer and some good ideas, but with Google Website Optimizer, Google's free testing and optimization tool, a website can harness the input of thousands of its visitors to produce results that really matter.Last June we announced the Website Workout contest to see which of our AdWords advertisers wanted to give their sites an extreme makeover. After asking thousands of advertisers why their sites needed makeovers, we chose four of the most compelling cases, and they were paired with consultants who helped them set up experiments using Website Optimizer.
Website Optimizer allows you to create multiple versions of your webpage (maybe one version with a red button and one with a blue) and evaluate which variation best meets your goals (whether that is sign-ups, purchases, or simply having visitors click to another page). The tool uses traffic data and advanced statistical formulas to figure out, according to your visitors, what makes your website the most useful.
Well, we are happy to announce the winners of the Website Workout contest and share some videos highlighting their experiences. Be sure to check them out, you might be surprised by what sorts of changes can make a big difference.
For example, by changing the layout of their product page, Colonial Candle was able to increase the number of candles they sold by 20% and improve sales by $20,000 in one month.
Before Optimization (click on the images for larger versions)
After Optimization
Check out the Website Optimizer Blog for more information.
Network effects: Introducing the Google Apps Authorized Reseller Program
1/14/2009 06:00:00 AM
Just under two years ago we launched Google Apps for businesses, offering a set of products that enable secure and cost-effective applications in the cloud. Fast-forward to today and our expanded Google Apps suite is used by more than 1 million businesses, with 3,000 new companies signing up each day.
How'd we get here? Through constant innovation (100 new features and counting), growing enthusiasm for cloud computing, and a partner network that provides our customers with complementary products, training, and integration.
Given this strong demand, we believe there's a great opportunity to do even more by helping IT solution providers grow their business opportunities around cloud computing. As we got our sea legs, we started slowly with a core group of partners who've been key trusted advisers in customer deployments, such as at Genentech and Hamilton Beach. We're now expanding this ecosystem to help more IT professionals build cloud computing expertise. Today we're excited to announce the Google Apps Authorized Reseller Program. With this release, solution providers globally can take advantage of tools that enable bundling of sales, customization and support for Google Apps Premier Edition for customers of all sizes.
We've adapted this program to complement resellers' current business models. Authorized Resellers have the flexibility to combine their existing services with Google Apps. With cloud-based Google Apps there is no new hardware or software to maintain. The Authorized Reseller program benefits include:
- owning the customer relationship and billing structure
- providing consulting, service management and end-user support
- receiving a recurring discount on the annual Google Apps licensing fee
- receiving marketing, sales and technical training from Google
Gingerbread Competition results are in
1/13/2009 03:22:00 PM
(Cross-posted from the SketchUp blog)Having spent some time perusing the entries for the SketchUp Gingerbread House Design Competition, we've reached a verdict – but it wasn't easy. Your models are (as expected) beautiful. For what it's worth, I accidentally ate part of my computer screen while we were judging. Drum roll please...
First Prize
Gingerbread House by Skeat
An absolutely beautiful use of the base model, in combination with some of the supplied dynamic candy components, to create an entirely believable construction. This is a gingerbread house that aficionados – analog and digital alike – can admire. It's also a skillful use of SketchUp.
Second Prize
Temple of Gingerbread by t
With this model, it's all about the details. The pediment (the triangular part of the roof) contains a scene of gingerbread people. The entablature (sits between the columns and the roof) is heavily ornamented and altogether believable. When you go inside, there's an altar to a gingerbread deity. This entry is complete both in concept and execution. Gingerbread Vitruvius would be proud.
Third Prize
Gingerbread2009 Disaster by kiwijbob
This one made us laugh. The house itself is intricate and skillfully modeled, but the best parts reveal themselves upon closer inspection. Someone's taken a giant bite out of the roof, and a giant gingerbread stormcloud (complete with gingerbread lightning bolt) threatens overhead. It's nice to see someone using a digital tool to do something that physical materials can't: ignore gravity.
Sprinkles Prize (for the best additions to the base model)
Gingerbread Hall by Toy Maker
A classic example of a thought carried through to its logical (and very appetizing) conclusion. The house, the men, the reindeer and the sleigh are consistent in that they are made of gingerbread. This house is constructable, and a lot of work went into making it that way.
Swirl Prize (for the best use of Dynamic Components in the model)
Gingerbread House by diweiman
A close contender for best model overall, we decided to award the Swirl Prize to this entry because it's interactive. Aside from being a stunning example of SketchUp mastery, the strings of flags are Dynamic Components that lengthen and re-color as you scale them. Clicking with the 'Interact' tool causes a rainbow to appear. You really need to download the model and open it in SketchUp to experience the full effect.
Sweet Tooth Prize (for the most creative use of a single candy ingredient)
Candy Cane Log House by Jan Melin
Candy canes for the walls. Candy canes for the roof. Candy canes for everything. Nice.
Take a look at all of the entries in this 3D Warehouse collection. Also peek at this Picasa album slideshow of some of our favorites:
Congratulations to everyone, and thanks for participating. We hope you had as much fun building them as we did looking them over.
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