A better way to organize photos?

Posted by Adrian Graham, Picasa Product Manager

It's not always easy to search through your personal photos, and it's certainly a lot harder than searching the web. Unless you take the time to label and organize all your pictures (and I'll freely admit that I don't), chances are it can be pretty hard to find that photo you just know is hidden somewhere deep inside your computer.

We've been working to make Picasa (Google's free photo-organizing software) even better when it comes to searching for your own photos—to make finding them be as easy as finding stuff on the web. Luckily we've found some people who share this goal, and are excited that the Neven Vision team is now part of Google.

Neven Vision comes to Google with deep technology and expertise around automatically extracting information from a photo. It could be as simple as detecting whether or not a photo contains a person, or, one day, as complex as recognizing people, places, and objects. This technology just may make it a lot easier for you to organize and find the photos you care about. We don't have any specific features to show off today, but we're looking forward to having more to share with you soon.

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Code your way to Gotham

Posted by Craig Nevill-Manning, Engineering Director

New York, New York -- A place so nice, we're holding the Google Code Jam finals here! I'm excited to tell you about our fourth annual competition, the 2006 Google International Code Jam. This year the last round will be held at our second-largest development center, right in downtown Manhattan. The best coders in the world (and that includes you, if you're up for the challenge) compete on speed and accuracy to solve challenging problems with only their brains, fingers, and a computer. If this is your idea of fun, then sign up -- registration opens today. We'll fly the best 100 coders to New York in October, all expenses paid, for the final competition, to meet Google software engineers and to experience Manhattan. First prize is $10,000; all finalists are guaranteed a minimum prize of $750.

Of course, we'll be on the lookout for future Googlers -- those who love solving tricky coding challenges, and are excited about solving the Big, Hairy, Audacious Goal of organizing the world's information.

Registration opens today, so sign up, test your mettle, and we'll save you a place in New York!

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Google in the ATL

Posted by Bruce Johnson, Engineering Manager, Google Atlanta Team

Check it out: Google's quiet presence in Atlanta is becoming less so, since our engineering and sales teams in Atlanta have recently teamed up. We couldn't be more excited about our brand new (and very Googly) Midtown office. The Atlanta sales team is in its sixth year and continues to grow. The newer engineering team has been hard at work developing the Google Web Toolkit, which launched recently at JavaOne.



When it comes to recruiting great people, Google doesn't let a silly little thing like geography get in the way. In addition to Mountain View, New York, Sydney, Kirkland, Santa Monica, Dublin, Zurich, London, Belo Horizonte, Trondheim, Bangalore, Hyderabad, and Tokyo, now you too can be a Googler in Atlanta.

Midtown Atlanta is an exciting place to be these days, so it's no coincidence that we set up shop next door to Georgia Tech, Technology Square, and Atlantic Station. Oh, and of course, The Varsity — because who can resist a naked dog walking?

We're hiring, so please let us know if you're interested in becoming an Atlanta Googler in engineering or sales.

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I scream for (Google) ice cream

Posted by Hunter Walk, Business Product Manager


The Google campus wasn't spared from the recent California heat wave, but we did have a secret weapon to beat back the sun - specially-made Google ice cream desserts from IT'S IT. If you're not from the Bay Area you might be tempted to call an It's It just another ice cream sandwich. But you'd be oh, so wrong. A scoop of ice cream between two old-fashioned oatmeal cookies dipped in chocolate? This is no ordinary dessert.

And indeed the Google version is no ordinary IT'S IT. Google chef Nate Keller worked with the fine folks at IT'S IT to produce a natural, locally sourced, trans-fat-free rendition of their excellent treat. Served only in our Mountain View cafe, it's even got a Google logo on the wrapper. Now, if I could only figure out how to keep a few from melting on my drive home to San Francisco.

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Now playing: Movie trailers

Posted by Matthias Ruhl, Research Scientist (& Google Movies 20%-er)

Are the special effects in Pirates of the Caribbean any good? Is Tom Hanks' haircut really that bad in The Da Vinci Code? Should you take your grandparents to see Clerks II? Will you be able to sleep after watching The Descent?

The best way to get your summer movie questions answered is to watch the trailers using the Google Movies onebox. Just search for the movie name and your Zip/city on Google.com, and the first result will include a link to the trailer, as well as critics' reviews and showtimes for your local movie theater. To get showtimes for The Descent in San Francisco, for instance, search for [the descent san francisco ca].

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Some homepage revisions

Posted by Marissa Mayer, VP, Search Products & User Experience

You may have noticed the Google homepage feels a little different today. That's because we've reorganized our tabs, or "top links" -- the blue links to Images, News, Maps, etc.). In this iteration, you'll see that Google Video is now featured on the homepage. And we've grouped into a More>> dropdown some other services like Books, Groups, and Froogle.

Search has always been a fundamental paradigm here, so we're constantly working to integrate more services into the main search experience. So while you can go to specific search services directly through the More>> dropdown, you'll also find great results from Books, Groups, and Froogle by just searching Google. As our product line evolves, we're also finding that we have a few destinations that people need to get to directly -- sometimes because the user experience relies heavily on browsing (News, Video) or because there's a different way of searching (Maps).

We'll be making more changes to the organization of our services over the next few months, so let us know what you think and we'll try and incorporate it in our next iteration.

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Thanks for checking out Google Checkout

Posted by Dror Shimshowitz, Product Marketing Manager

People always ask, what makes Google tick? There are two key elements: our ongoing commitment to building great technology that empowers people like you -- and of course our passion for free T-shirts. Today, to thank everyone using Google Checkout to buy stuff online, we thought we'd combine the two. Everyone who buys something for $20 or more through Google Checkout all day today gets a free T-shirt. So find something you want to buy, enjoy faster checkout online -- and make room in the drawer for your new apparel.

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