Being a good sport

Posted by Manu Rekhi, Product Marketing Manager

Summer’s that time of year when a lot of Googlers channel our inner Tiger, Ronaldinho, Venus, Shaq or Albert. Admittedly, most of us are weekend warriors and couch potatoes, not to mention keyboard jockeys — and we tend to fall into a few other categories, too. Fortunately Google can help us all out: we’ve got some new sports-related products and search features launching. When it comes to sports information, do you recognize your type here?

Hometown Hero. Whether across continents or across branches of the family tree, you’re fiercely loyal to that team that stirred your childhood passions. But time zones, TV broadcast schedules, and the demands of, say, work or dinner may not always cooperate. Now Google can deliver up-to-the-minute scores, stats, and schedules 24x7. Check out:

- Google.com — Fire it up on the browser of either your PC or mobile device to search for your favorite World Cup group or team to view real-time scores and schedules

- Sports Gadgets — Add these to your personalized Google homepage, including a new one with World Cup info

- Google SMS — Text-message a team name to 46645 (GOOGL) in the U.S. for World Cup scores and schedules. Fans in Germany, Japan and Canada can also give it a whirl.

- Google Desktop - Get live World Cup scores right on your desktop with this Soccer Scores gadget

Sports-Commentator-In-Training. Forget “le mot juste” — you’re about “le stat juste” or “le uplifting personal story juste.” You color commentator-wannabes have to have the latest data in hand and want to connect with others just like you, since your significant other has probably long since tuned you out). Check out:

Joga.com — Football (a.k.a. “soccer” in the U.S.) fans, build your own groups and clubs, share all kinds of football-related info, upload photos and video, and get updates on matches and events

Google Alerts — Get current news and website changes as they happen by creating Alerts for your favorite teams and players

Google Video — If you can't be in Germany this month, feed your football fever at this special section of Google Video

The Intellectual. You look underneath the sweat and adrenaline to explore the cultural and psychological underpinnings of sports and sporting events. Big questions like football vs. soccer, or perhaps basketball vs. ice hockey as a preferred winter sport. Or maybe the impact of major sports events on worker productivity. To further indulge your curiosity, there’s Google Trends.

The One with Team Pajamas. Enough said. If you're a fan of both football and Firefox, soon you can grab this Joga.com extension built in collaboration with Firefox to show support for your team (or all 32 of them) while you're surfing the web. You'll have a constant pulse on games, players, and stats.

Update: Google.com results currently support group or team search only. Added Google Video link; added link to Google Desktop Soccer Scores gadget.

Read More

The Debate over Net Neutrality

Posted by Andrew McLaughlin, Senior Policy Counsel

The debate over "net neutrality" is coming to a boil in the next week as the House of Representatives is due to vote on a bill that could determine the future of the Internet. The big phone and cable TV companies want Congress’s permission to create a new, unprecedented regulatory bureaucracy on the Internet – a private bureaucracy of broadband monopolists with the power to determine what content gets to you first and fastest. Google believes that forcing people and companies to get permission from, and pay special fees to, the phone and cable companies to connect with one another online is fundamentally counter to the freedom and innovation that have defined the Internet.

Our CEO Eric Schmidt believes this situation is so important that he has written an open letter to Google users asking them to speak out on this issue. We urge all of you to read his letter and call your representative in Congress at 202-224-3121. For more information on the issue, and more ways to make your voice be heard, visit It'sOurNet.org.

Update: For those following this debate closely, the key House vote is happening Thursday night or Friday morning on the Markey-Boucher-Eshoo-Inslee Amendment, which would add meaningful net neutrality provisions to H.R. 5252, the Communications Opportunity, Promotion, and Enhancement (COPE) Act. We believe anything less that this amendment would be a loss for freedom and innovation on the Internet.

Read More

Get in sync

Posted by Brian Rakowski, Product Manager

What could be worse than forgetting to bookmark the obscure page you found that maps out the perfect walking tour of Venice? Having bookmarked it on the computer sitting on your desk back at home, 6000 miles away, instead of on the laptop you brought along. Or how about the frustration of being on a new computer and not remembering your passwords because your browser on your old computer automatically filled them in for you?

These sorts of frustrations inspired us to build a Firefox extension that keeps your browser settings for all your computers in sync. Google Browser Sync unifies your bookmarks, history, saved passwords, and persistent cookies across all the computers where you install it. It also remembers which tabs and windows you had open when you last closed any of your browsers and gives you a chance to reopen them. We think you'll enjoy how it handles sync conflicts and "just works," enabling you to bring your browser with you everywhere.

Meanwhile, we've also been improving version 2 of the Google Toolbar for Firefox. We've fixed a bunch of bugs and made it more stable, so we're stripping off the "beta" tag. We'll be updating all Toolbar users to this new version in the next couple of weeks.

Read More

Hello, I'm a Mac. And I'm a Mac Video Player.

Posted by Matthew Vosburgh, Software Engineer

We just released the Mac version of the Google Video Player. Now Mac users can buy and download the premium shows on Google Video. Go on, grab an episode of CSI you forgot to TiVo, or perhaps an old favorite episode of Star Trek Voyager.

For added coolness, the Mac Google Video Player is a Universal binary, so it runs natively on both Intel and PowerPC Macs. Our new player will also play the free videos from our site, so you can download and keep movies like Cat on Ice, this very cute wombat or my personal favorite, Talking Cats. This is the perfect excuse to run out and get one of those cute new black MacBooks...

Read More

It's nice to share

Posted by Jonathan Rochelle, Product Manager

Many of you must be wondering, “Whatever happened to 2Web Technologies?" Um - no? Anybody? Well, if you're wondering, we joined Google's New York City office last year to come up with a solution to a problem we understood all too well: how to quickly and easily share information in real time. Spreadsheets were a clear target. They can have real power, but there are equally real drawbacks to collaborating and sharing them. This fact led our little team to explore making spreadsheet software, and the spreadsheets themselves, available on the web. And now, Google Spreadsheets is available as a limited test on Google Labs. Even when it was only partly developed, we used Google Spreadsheets (alpha!) to manage our task lists, our feature lists, our bandwidth estimates, our storage estimates, even our complex team event voting ;). We now know the true meaning of "share."

Now when I say “share,” I don’t mean “send group email,” and I certainly don't mean "time-share". (That’s actually the root of the problem we are trying to solve: multiple out-of-sync versions that are email attachments.) I do mean “use and update the same spreadsheet.” When I use Google Spreadsheets to organize events with the other parents at my kids' school, we’ll be looking at the same details at the same time. If I change the agenda of next Friday’s teacher’s meeting, the other parents will see that change immediately. When my brother-in-law’s bike club uses Google Spreadsheets to track rides, they’ll be in sync -- and if I change the time of next week's ride, the other riders may actually show up.

So don’t be surprised if you are soon invited by someone to share a spreadsheet. (We're rolling this out as a limited test.) Your kid's sports coach, your aunt in Omaha trying to organize a major family reunion, your friend who promised to compile a list of all your favorite hiking trails (and now wants you to help), or your project team which now has a way to keep tasks and status in one place for all to see.

Read More

Acumen Fund’s 2006 Fellows

Posted by Jacqueline Novogratz, CEO, Acumen Fund

Recently I wrote about the new Acumen Fund Fellows Program, with a call for applicants. We were overwhelmed by the response: Some 600 candidates from 52 countries applied for the opportunity to spend a year with Acumen Fund, first for training at our New York office and then working to support an investment in the field. The applicant pool demonstrates the powerful desire among the next generation of leaders to merge financial and analytical skills and business experience with the social, political and environmental needs of our world.

After an intense three-month selection process, we are extremely pleased to announce our eight 2006 Fellows, who hail from Africa, Asia, Europe and North America.

• Jocelyn Wyatt (U.S.) Previously India Country Director for Scojo Foundation
• Nadaa Taiyab (Sri Lanka) Former World Bank Consultant in Indonesia
• Keely Stevenson (U.S.) Created first online community for social entrepreneurs, Social Edge for the Skoll Foundation
• Fabrice Ndjodo (Cameroon) Former investment analyst with International Finance Corporation
• David Lehr (U.S.) Reuters Digital Vision Fellow, Stanford University
• Adrien Couton (France) Senior Associate at McKinsey & Company
• Eric Berkowitz (U.S.) Founder of management consulting firm ESB Partners
• Ayeleen Ajanee (Pakistan) Previously with Unilever, Pakistan

Our goal in creating the Fellows Program was to build an “entrepreneurial bench” of talented individuals for the social enterprise sector. Key to our ability in attracting and selecting these Fellows was the strong involvement of the Acumen Fund community. The support we’ve received from Google.org has been invaluable in launching the Fellows program, as well as in building our management capacity worldwide and in fueling new investments.

Again, we are delighted to be announcing this cohort of extraordinary individuals, who will be starting with us in September. Over the next few weeks, we will be posting more information on each Fellow on the Acumen Fund blog, as well as updates from each with observations and insights as they begin their work this fall. We hope to see the Fellows program serve as a model for developing leaders with the skills and moral imagination to build solutions from the perspective of the poor.

Read More

Reply by chat

Posted by Mike Sego, Gmail Engineer

I love how when I reply to a message in Gmail, the message I compose gets grouped into the same conversation. Seriously -- of all the ways Gmail works, this tops the list for me. Having to look in separate places to find sent vs. received messages just feels so antiquated. Gmail keeps my conversations in context, and whether I'm looking back one day or several months later, I get a full view of exactly what we discussed.

But sometimes I want to reply to an email message, but I notice the sender is online and available for chat. Wouldn't it be nice if chat replies get grouped with the conversation just like email? Now they do: At the bottom of any message sent by someone on your buddy list, right next to where you'd click to "Reply" or "Forward," there's a link to "Reply by chat" if the sender is online. This will open a chat window, and the chat history will be saved to the same conversation. Nice.

Read More