Spend your summer with Google Desktop

Posted by Mendel Chuang, Product Marketing Manager

If you're a Google Desktop fan looking for something to do this summer, it's time to get your creative juices flowing and create a submission for the Google Desktop Gadget Contest. Winning a cool T-shirt almost goes without saying, but you could also win the top prize of $5,000. To help you along, there's the Google Desktop Gadget Designer, a WYSIWYG development environment.

And since Google Desktop 4 is now available in traditional Chinese, simplified Chinese, Korean, Russian, Swedish, Finnish, Danish, Norwegian, Polish, Turkish, Hungarian, Czech, Slovenian, Greek, Slovak, Croatian, Catalan, and Bulgarian, be sure to think globally as you design your gadget. And speaking of version 4, thanks to all the testers who gave us feedback, we're now able to bring the English version out of beta. So if you've been waiting to easily search and personalize your desktop, here's your chance.

Lastly, if you need some inspiration for the contest, check out our list of Google Gadgets. You might be surprised at what you find...

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More of the world in your pocket

Posted by Abhijit Kalamkar, Software Engineer

Today Google's mobile web services get a bit more worldly: We've just added a raft of new languages to the pocket-sized versions of Gmail, News, and Personalized Home. Along with U.S. and U.K. English, French, Italian, German, Spanish, Dutch, Russian, Chinese, and Turkish interfaces to most of these products.

If you've already used any of Google's products on your mobile device (like Maps), you know it's a great way to stay connected to the Internet, even if your PC is miles away. What's handy about these three products in particular is that they keep you in touch with the information that matters most to you.

Personalized Home, for instance, displays the same customized content as your personalized Google homepage on the PC, but in a phone-friendly format that's easy to read and navigate. (If you've been looking for a fast, easy way to view any feed via your phone, here it is.)

Then there's Gmail. If you've ever been on the road, desperate to remember something like a flight confirmation number that's stashed in your inbox, or directions to a party you were sure you could remember, this mobile version of Gmail lets you quickly search, read, and reply to email wherever you are. (And note the nifty mobile-specific features we've added, like Gmail's ability to directly call buddies in your contact list.)

News can get personal, too: now you can search across mobile news sources to reel in the latest news on whatever subject you're a fan of, whether it's 'arsenal football' or just all things 'macintosh' -- wherever and whenever. So give 'em all a whirl -- visit Google in your mobile phone's browser, and click the News, Gmail, or Personalized Home links.

You might just discover the little communications device in your pocket has just become a whole lot more valuable.

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Protecting children online

Posted by Nicole Wong, Associate General Counsel

Google is deeply committed to providing a healthy and trusted online environment for all of our users, and especially children. While the Internet provides an amazing opportunity for people to connect with useful information, some online material poses serious risks to children and families, and some online behavior violates the law and should be eradicated. Child pornography, in particular, is a horrific and vicious crime. Today, I testified before the House of Representatives Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations about Google’s efforts to keep kids safe online. Among the initiatives that I highlighted:

- Google has a zero-tolerance policy on child pornography. We prohibit any advertising related to child pornography. When we become aware of child pornography anywhere in our search engine or on our site, we immediately remove and report it to the appropriate authorities.

- We work closely with law enforcement to help track down child predators, and respond to hundreds of child safety-related requests per year.

- We help families stay safe online with tools like SafeSearch, which enables users to filter adult content from search results. We also promote online safety through our support of the WiredSafety education campaign.

These are just the beginning. We believe that much can be done to combat child exploitation online, and are committed to doing our part to protect the Internet as a safe place for all.

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A Sitemaps update

Posted by Vanessa Fox, Google Sitemaps team

Website owners will want to know about a raft of new features we've just released for Google Sitemaps. This is just the latest in a long line of recent additions, including:

• robots.txt analysis tool
• quick snapshot of the status of your site in the index, notification of violations of the webmaster guidelines and an easy-to-use re-inclusion request form (here)
• comprehensive webmaster help center

If you don't have a Sitemaps account already, get started with the site status wizard.

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Adobe and Google team up for Toolbar

Posted by Sundar Pichai, Director of Product Management

Starting today, Adobe is offering the Google Toolbar to its customers as a free download -- a great way to take Google search with you anywhere on the web. You can access Google search capabilities from any website, block pop-ups, see search suggestions as you type, personalize your toolbar by adding buttons from your favorite sites, and more. We're excited to partner with Adobe to make these features available to their users, and look forward to finding other ways to work together.

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Calling for federal consumer privacy protection

Posted by Nicole Wong, Associate General Counsel

Google is committed to protecting your privacy and to supporting an Internet environment that also respects individual privacy. Today, we're joining a group of notable U.S. companies calling for federal consumer privacy legislation.

Here in the U.S., we have a growing patchwork quilt of state privacy laws, disparate industry-specific privacy laws (for example, different laws covering health-related data, financial data and children's online data), and a similarly-mixed bag of data security laws. This matrix of laws is complex, incomplete, and sometimes contradictory. For consumers, the result is a set of privacy protections that are uneven at best.

On an Internet beset with spyware, malware, phishing, identity-theft, and other privacy threats, enforcement of privacy protections has become an industry-wide challenge, and highlights the lack of a coherent regulatory structure. Google strongly supports the adoption of a federal consumer privacy law. It would be good for our users, and would contribute to consumer trust on the Internet as a platform for communication, expression, e-commerce, and so forth. Americans care about their privacy, and so does Google. A baseline U.S. federal consumer privacy law will help protect all of us online.

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Publishing your Google Calendar

Posted by David Marmaros, Google Calendar Tech Lead

Lots of people already use Google Calendar to stay organized and schedule their lives, and that's great. But maybe you want to publicize an event for a group of people -- say you're the captain of a dragonboat racing team who needs to coordinate the practice and race schedule for your crew. Possibly you're a soccer fanatic who wants to publish all the 2006 FIFA World Cup matches. Or maybe you'd like to publish a calendar of cool events around town to share with friends.

Now you can get the word out to anyone, because we just added a new publishing feature that lets you show an interactive calendar to others -- even if they don't use Google Calendar. All calendars now have a simple web page that you can point people to, and you can even incorporate one into your own website, profile page or blog. A few quick steps and you'll be ready to show others what's going on in your world.

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