We're very excited to announce the new release of Google SketchUp 7. If you don't already know about the fun you can have with SketchUp, here's a quick recap:

SketchUp is software you can use to build 3D models of anything: your house, killer robots, furniture, trees, abstract art — anything. Architects and engineers use it to design buildings and other structures. Woodworkers use it to plan their projects. And lots of people use it to figure out where to put their furniture. SketchUp is easy to learn, it comes in free and Pro versions, and it's more fun than a houseful of clowns. Oh, and you can use it to build models for Google Earth, too.

So what's new in SketchUp 7? There's too much to list here, but we focused on three major areas for this release:

* Making it even easier to get started – We've created a new class of "smart" objects called Dynamic Components, which are simpler to work with for new modelers. Take a look at this video to see what I mean:




* Making it easier to share what you make and collaborate with other people – We built a better link between SketchUp and the rest of the 3D world, made it possible to "sign" your models, and added Google Docs–style collaboration and sharing to our 3D Warehouse.

* Adding powerful features for experienced SketchUp Pro users – SketchUp is only half of the SketchUp Pro suite; the other half is all about sharing your work with your clients. LayOut 2 (which is now officially out of beta and rarin' to go) lets you create multi-page documents and presentations. Your models are linked to your LayOut file so that changing the former automatically updates the latter.

Take a look at the What's New in 7 page on the SketchUp website to get the whole scoop. There's a great video to watch, and it stars some of the more prone-to-sunlight members of our engineering team — in lab coats, no less. Don't miss it.

Posted by Aidan Chopra, SketchUp Product Evangelist

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It's Jam time
11/14/2008 09:00:00 PM
Today we hosted the Google Code Jam finals, inviting 100 of the world's top programmers to flex their brains in a grand coding showdown. This is our fifth annual Global Code Jam competition, and thanks to a new platform created by a 20%-time team that includes previous Code Jam winners, more than 11,000 contestants tackled complex algorithmic challenges, programming in the language of their choice. After a series of online rounds in July and August, the top 500 semi-finalists competed in regional semifinals at 15 offices across Europe, Asia and the Americas to determine the final 100.

We're pleased to announce that after three hours of furious typing, debugging and problem-solving at the onsite finals in Mountain View. this afternoon, Tiancheng Lou of China took home the $10,000 Grand Prize. Zeyuan Zhu from China won second place, Bruce Merry from the UK came in third, and cash prizes went to the other finalists. Overall, the 100 finalists represented 23 different countries.

Congratulations to all the Code Jammers. We hope to see you at the next Jam. It's never too early to start practicing!

Posted by Jeanne Williams, Google Code Jam Program Manager

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Labels: developers

Google Site Search gets more demanding
11/13/2008 07:59:00 AM
Customers today demand speed. Waiting around is so, well, yesterday -- as so many of the things we used to have to wait for are now at our fingertips online. We can read up to the minute news, get directions, and find the answers to our most pressing questions simply by entering them into a search box.

For a business running their own website, this means that visitors who turn to search expect to have access to the newest products, pages and announcements a site has to offer.

That's why today we're excited to bring you On-Demand Indexing for Google Site Search. On-Demand Indexing is like a turbocharger for Google Site Search, ensuring that your newest pages appear in search results on your website fast. Whether you're promoting a new line of products, sharing breaking news or reports, or updating your site in time for the holiday season, On-Demand Indexing puts businesses in control with an "Index Now" button, giving them the flexibility to quickly update search results whenever they have new content to update or add.

Google Site Search builds on the Google Custom Search Engine by adding business integration features, the option to turn off ads, a more customized look and feel, as well as email and phone support. Check out this video to learn more:



Anyone with a website can take advantage of On-Demand Indexing today by signing up for Google Site Search. For more information about On-Demand Indexing, and how Google Site Search can help your online business or website, check out the Google Enterprise Blog or visit www.google.com/sitesearch.

Posted by Nitin Mangtani, Lead Product Manager, Enterprise Search, and Tom Duerig, Software Engineer

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Labels: enterprise

How we help track flu trends
11/12/2008 07:48:00 PM
This post is the latest in an ongoing series about how we harness the data we collect to improve our products and services for our users. - Ed.

Google search isn't just about looking up football scores from last weekend or finding a great hotel for your next vacation. It can also be used for the public good. Yesterday, we announced Google Flu Trends, which uses aggregated search data in an effort to confront the challenge of influenza outbreaks.

By taking Google Trends — where you can see snapshots of what's on the public's collective mind — and applying the tool to a public health problem, our engineers found that there was a correlation between flu-related queries and the actual flu. They created a model for near real-time estimates about outbreaks, in the hopes that both health care professionals and the general public would use this tool to better prepare for flu season.

Since we launched yesterday, the response from the medical community has been positive. "The earlier the warning, the earlier prevention and control measures can be put in place," said Dr. Lyn Finelli of the influenza division at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, to The New York Times. "[T]his could prevent cases of influenza." You can check out the tool for yourself.

We couldn't have built this flu detection system without analyzing historical patterns. Because flu season is different every year, just a few months of data wouldn't have done the trick. For example, the 2003-2004 flu season was unusually severe in many regions. The data from that season was especially robust and allowed us to discover a more accurate, reliable set of flu-related terms. To learn more about how we built the system, see this page on how Flu Trends works.

Because we're committed to protecting your privacy, we made sure that the searches that we analyze for Google Flu Trends are not drawn from personally-identifiable search histories but rather from an aggregated set of hundreds of billions of searches.

In order to provide a rough geographic breakdown of potential flu outbreaks, we use IP address information from our server logs to make a best guess about where queries originate. To protect your privacy, we anonymize those IP addresses at nine months. And we don't provide this aggregated, anonymized data to third parties. For more information about the privacy protections for Flu Trends check out our FAQs and privacy policy.

This is just the first launch in what we hope will be several public service applications of Google Trends in the future. And as we continue to think of ways to use aggregated and anonymized search data in helpful ways, we're also committed to safeguarding our users' privacy.

Posted by Pablo Chavez, Senior Policy Counsel

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Labels: google.org, healthcare, policy and issues, privacy

Promote your video with YouTube Sponsored Videos
11/12/2008 01:18:00 PM
With 13 hours of video uploaded to YouTube every minute and millions of viewers watching hundreds of millions of videos every day, the popularity of YouTube can be a mixed blessing for users. While it's easier to get your 15 minutes of fame (or more, depending on who you are), it can be difficult for people to find your video in the first place, even if it's exactly what they're looking for.

But what if you could promote your video on YouTube and make it easier for people to find it?

Today, we are excited to announce a way to do just that. YouTube Sponsored Videos is our new advertising program that enables all video creators -- from the everyday user to a Fortune 500 advertiser -- to reach people who are interested in their content, products, or services, with relevant videos. Anyone can use Sponsored Videos to make sure their videos find a larger audience, whether you're a start-up band trying to break out with a new single, a film studio seeking to promote an exciting movie trailer, or even a first-time uploader trying to quickly build a following on the site.

So how does Sponsored Videos work? Easy-to-use automated tools allow content owners to decide where they'd like their videos to appear, place bids in an automated online auction, and set daily spending budgets. Then, when people search for videos, YouTube will display relevant videos alongside the search results. These videos are clearly labeled as "sponsored videos" and are priced on a cost-per-click basis. (You can learn more about these tools in the video below.)



We are constantly working to develop the right advertising format for the right content and experience on YouTube. That's why our primary focus with Sponsored Videos is to build a platform consistent with the site's search and discovery experience. Just as AdWords provides people with relevant, non-obtrusive advertising, we hope that Sponsored Videos will provide useful, engaging content, accessible to advertisers of all kinds.

We think this is a great first step for offering users, partners, and advertisers search marketing solutions on YouTube. Like Google, our philosophy at YouTube is continuous innovation, so we will work to improve Sponsored Videos by listening to your feedback and observing the auction as it takes time to fully develop. We hope that by leveraging much of the technology and insight of the AdWords team, we can make this transition as easy as possible.

We do not believe there is one advertising solution for YouTube, but lots of valuable ways for advertisers to engage with our audience. The scale of YouTube Sponsored Videos -- with the branding power of InVideo ads, the engagement of our contests, the analytics of YouTube Insight, etc. -- should create exciting opportunities for users, partners, and advertisers.

YouTube Sponsored Videos is currently only available in the United States, but we're working to bring it to other countries soon. If you're interested in running your own Sponsored Videos campaign, please visit ads.youtube.com.

Posted by Matthew Liu, Product Manager, YouTube

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Labels: ads, video

An invitation from the mayor of Rome: Come see Ancient Rome in 3D
11/12/2008 03:00:00 AM
As you read this, I am standing beneath a marble statue of Julius Caesar, participating in an event that means a lot to me: the launch of the Ancient Rome 3D layer in Google Earth. Thanks to Google and the Rome Reborn Project, everyone in the world, from Rome itself to Calcutta, can now travel through time and discover Ancient Rome as it was 1,688 years ago when it was ruled by Emperor Constantine.

The project includes more than 6,700 buildings of Ancient Rome rebuilt in 3D — a true record. This accomplishment demonstrates how technology can be helpful in promoting culture and disseminating knowledge. Ancient Rome 3D is a great opportunity to rediscover the importance of Ancient Roman culture, which is at the base of the Italian, European and, more generally, Western identities. The archaeological heritage and the artistic monuments of the Roman Empire have found their way to many continents, but it is in the capital city (known in Roman times as Caput Mundi, which is Latin for "Capital of the World") that we can still find most of it. For example, architectural masterpieces like the Colosseum (considered one of the seven wonders of the world) have managed to withstand the tests of time — resisting sacks, invasions and world wars over the centuries and proving, with the immortality of their stones, the grandness of one of the most majestic empires that has ever existed.

What fascinates me most about this project is the accuracy of the details of the three-dimensional models. It's such a great experience to be able to admire the monuments, streets and buildings of Ancient Rome with a virtual camera that lets you go inside and see all the architectural details. From the Colosseum to the Ludus Magnus, from the Forum Caesar to the Arch of Septimius Severus, from the Rostra to the Basilica Julia, you can get up close to them all. The idea that virtual technologies now let people experience the city that I guide as it appeared in 320 A.D. fills me with pride — a pride that I inherited from Rome's glorious past.

(To find out more about the new layer, visit http://earth.google.com/rome/, watch the video tour below, or check out the Google Lat Long Blog.)



Update @ 12:10 PM: Rome wasn't built in a day! The Ancient Rome 3D layer will be available soon. We're sorry for the delay, and we'll post here when it's live.

Update @ 6:50 PM: The layer is now live in Google Earth, in the Gallery folder of the Layers panel. When you zoom in on Rome, you will see yellow Ancient Rome 3D icons. To load the terrain and buildings, click on any icon and then click the links at the bottom of the bubble.

Posted by Gianni Alemanno, Mayor of Rome

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Labels: Geo

About our Veterans Day logo
11/11/2008 03:40:00 PM
Today is Veterans Day in the U.S., a day to honor all veterans of military service. As we often do, we created a special design of the Google logo (which we call a "doodle") in honor of the event. The design for the doodle featured a few military-style hats. We weren't trying to represent all of the branches or all of the symbols of military service and, as a result of space and design limitations, we inadvertently left the U.S. Coast Guard out of our depiction.

Understandably, we have heard from many veterans and Coast Guard members, and have now posted an updated version of our Veterans Day doodle, including all five branches of the military.

Our sincere apologies for what may seem like a slight -- this was not in any way our intention. Our thanks to those of you who were alert enough to catch our omission and diligent enough to tell us about it. Thank you very much to all current and former Coast Guard members for your outstanding service. And finally, thank you very much to all U.S. veterans, for protecting our nation and the ideals it stands for.

Posted by Marissa Mayer, VP, Search Products & User Experience, and Dennis Hwang, Chief Doodler and Webmaster

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Tracking flu trends
11/11/2008 12:51:00 PM
Like many Googlers, we're fascinated by trends in online search queries. Whether you're interested in U.S. elections, today's hot trends, or each year's Zeitgeist, patterns in Google search queries can be very informative. Last year, a small team of software engineers began to explore if we could go beyond simple trends and accurately model real-world phenomena using patterns in search queries. After meeting with the public health gurus on Google.org's Predict and Prevent team, we decided to focus on outbreaks of infectious disease, which are responsible for millions of deaths around the world each year. You've probably heard of one such disease: influenza, commonly known as "the flu," which is responsible for up to 500,000 deaths worldwide each year. If you or your kids have ever caught the flu, you know just how awful it can be.

Our team found that certain aggregated search queries tend to be very common during flu season each year. We compared these aggregated queries against data provided by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and we found that there's a very close relationship between the frequency of these search queries and the number of people who are experiencing flu-like symptoms each week. As a result, if we tally each day's flu-related search queries, we can estimate how many people have a flu-like illness. Based on this discovery, we have launched Google Flu Trends, where you can find up-to-date influenza-related activity estimates for each of the 50 states in the U.S.

The CDC does a great job of surveying real doctors and patients to accurately track the flu, so why bother with estimates from aggregated search queries? It turns out that traditional flu surveillance systems take 1-2 weeks to collect and release surveillance data, but Google search queries can be automatically counted very quickly. By making our flu estimates available each day, Google Flu Trends may provide an early-warning system for outbreaks of influenza.

For epidemiologists, this is an exciting development, because early detection of a disease outbreak can reduce the number of people affected. If a new strain of influenza virus emerges under certain conditions, a pandemic could emerge and cause millions of deaths (as happened, for example, in 1918). Our up-to-date influenza estimates may enable public health officials and health professionals to better respond to seasonal epidemics and — though we hope never to find out — pandemics.

We shared our preliminary results with the Epidemiology and Prevention Branch of the Influenza Division at CDC throughout the 2007-2008 flu season, and together we saw that our search-based flu estimates had a consistently strong correlation with real CDC surveillance data. Our system is still very experimental, so anything is possible, but we're hoping to see similar correlations in the coming year.

We couldn't have created such good models without aggregating hundreds of billions of individual searches going back to 2003. Of course, we're keenly aware of the trust that users place in us and of our responsibility to protect their privacy. Flu Trends can never be used to identify individual users because we rely on anonymized, aggregated counts of how often certain search queries occur each week. The patterns we observe in the data are only meaningful across large populations of Google search users.

Flu season is here, so avoid becoming part of our statistics and get a flu shot! And keep an eye on those graphs if you're curious to see how the flu season unfolds...

Update on 11/21: The team just published an academic paper in Nature, the international journal of science, explaining the science and methodology behind Flu Trends. Check it out for more information.

Posted by Jeremy Ginsberg and Matt Mohebbi, Software Engineers

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Labels: google.org

Talk face-to-face right from within Gmail
11/11/2008 12:18:00 PM
From viewing videos on YouTube to screening family events, people love being able to watch something exactly as it happened. And as webcams have become popular, more and more of us are realizing that video is the next best thing to an in-person conversation. Today we're introducing Gmail voice and video chat, which lets you have free voice and video conversations right from within Gmail.

Video chatting from Gmail is as easy as sending an instant message. With our team spread out across Google offices in Sweden and the U.S., it's been really handy in helping us work together. Just click on the new "Video & more" menu in a Gmail chat window and select "Start video chat" or "Start voice chat." You can switch to a full screen view or pop out the chat window and change the size and positioning as you wish. Of course, not everyone has a webcam, but even if you don't, you can still have voice conversations alongside your email and regular chat. Take a look at this short video to see more:



Gmail voice and video chat will be rolled out globally over the next day or so for Macs and PCs. The first time you use this feature, you'll be prompted to download and install a small plugin. To get started, visit http://www.gmail.com/videochat or click on the "Options" menu in a Gmail chat window and choose "Add voice/video chat." Find out more on our Gmail Blog.

Posted by Serge Lachapelle, Product Manager, Stockholm

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Labels: apps

New Google Help Forums
11/06/2008 03:37:00 PM
For the last few years, the Google Help Forums have been a great gathering place for users, developers, and anyone else who has an opinion about Google or its products. We've been taking stock of what you have to say, and we've been impressed by the hundreds of thousands of people who really understand our products and are willing to share their knowledge. It's because of experts like the orkuteers, Google Apps Power Posters, Webmaster Help Bionic Posters and many others that the forums are a great place for getting quality answers, reporting bugs, offering product suggestions and sharing tips and tricks.

To make it even easier to get you the right answers to your questions as quickly as possible and to spot the most helpful commenters, we are converting our forums to a new system designed to help, encourage and reward everyone who visits.

Some of the features include:

* improved search results, including posts from current and new forums

* the ability to designate especially helpful forum members as "Top Contributors"

* a reputation and ranking system

* the ability for users, Top Contributors and Googlers to mark questions as answered

* easier access to Help Center content

* expanded user profiles that highlight your forum activity


This video gives you a few more details on our latest changes:



A few products -- AdWords, AdSense, Android Market, Google Apps, Google Chrome and most of our Polish products -- have already switched to this system. Over the next several months, we'll convert more product Help Forums, initially in English and then in other languages.

If you have a question, bug report, suggestion, or just want to mix and mingle, we welcome you to "stop by" our forums. Googlers will check in from time to time to answer questions, listen to feedback, and highlight great responses and the people who provided them.