Google Launches New Site With Resources for the 2012 Presidential Election

Google will officially announce its online information hub for political elections on Monday, a day before the Iowa Caucuses. It is the first website Google has dedicated exclusively to elections.

The new website has both Egyptian and U.S. editions. Google will post content from the later version on a large screens throughout the Media Filing Center at the Iowa Caucuses on Tuesday.

That information includes news articles sorted by candidate and issue, links to voter resources such as the political calendar and YouTube politics channel and a trends dashboard that shows search trends, news mentions and YouTube views for each candidate.

“As Nov. 6, 2012, draws closer, the site will evolve into a robust election hub where citizens can watch, learn, discuss, participate — and perhaps even make an impact on — the digital campaign trail as it blazes forward to the election of the next President of the United States,” a Google spokesperson wrote in a statement to Mashable.

Google’s offline presence in Iowa will extend beyond its display of its online resources. From a sponsored section of the Filing Center, it will conduct live hangouts with journalists who are covering the 2012 elections. The company is also serving them food from local restaurants.

Surrounded by media and politics, Google will be quite at home at the Filing Center. According to Pew, the company is the biggest driver of traffic to top news sites. It’s also taken steps toward becoming not just a referrer, but a destination for political information with campaign tools, a dedicated YouTube channel and virtual town halls.

Will you be heading to Google’s new election site to learn about candidates in the 2012 election, or will you navigate directly to more traditional sources?

Source : Mashable.com

Let it snow - On your PC

'Let it snow' becomes Google's newest search Easter egg. So go for it. Let it snow!

Google launches “Youtube for Schools”

Google has launched a YouTube for Schools service to make educationally relevant videos available for use in school. It's a great idea, but for it to actually be used in schools, the authorities will have to modify their filters to allow teachers to access at least this portion of You Tube.


Most schools have some type of filters in place designed to block pornography and other inappropriate material, and it's common for these filters to also block social media, including all of Facebook, MySpace and YouTube.

It's not that kids are staying away from social media just because they can't use it at school. They're using it at home, at friends' houses and -- via their mobile devices -- anywhere they happen to be. Their non-school hours are filled with use of technology and social media. Maybe schools ought to put a sign at the front gate that reads, "You are now leaving the 21st century."

Completely blocking domains like Facebook.com or YouTube.com denies kids access to some incredibly useful material. There are thousands of Facebook pages dedicated to a wide variety of subjects that can be used in schools. If you search for "Facebook education," you'll find links to numerous ways that Facebook and other social media can help teachers supplement their existing materials. One article that comes up in that search, "100 Ways You Should be Using Facebook in Your Classroom" lists some incredibly useful projects like encouraging kids to follow news feeds relevant to course material, share book reviews, practice a foreign language, create their own news source, keep up with politicians, post class notes, brainstorm and lots more.

Even more than Facebook, Google's YouTube can be an incredibly useful resource in school. Sure, there are plenty of inappropriate videos on the user-supplied service. But there is also a wealth of resources from a very wide variety of sources, including the Smithsonian Institution, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, UC Berkeley, PBS, TEDTalks and the amazing educational videos from Kahn Academy, which are used in schools throughout the world. You can find some of this material -- along with tips on how to use YouTube in the classroom -- at YouTube.com/teachers.


Because many schools simply ban YouTube, these incredible resources are not available for use in the classroom. Kids can watch them at home or on the way to school via the mobile devices, but not on school computers. Preventing distractions such as videos of cats dancing on a piano or keeping kids from age-inappropriate videos in school makes sense, but not at the expense of preventing kids and teachers from accessing a vast library of educationally sound videos.

As part of the launch of "YouTube for Schools", Google is encouraging schools to open up their filters so that teachers can access YouTube.com/edu. Hopefully school administrators will see the value in this and find ways to unblock at least this portion of YouTube.

Source : hindustantimes.com

Google donating $11.5M to fight modern slavery

Tech giant Google">Google announced Wednesday it is donating $11.5 million to several coalitions fighting to end the modern-day slavery of some 27 million people around the world.

In what is believed to be the largest-ever corporate grant devoted to the advocacy, intervention and rescue of people being held, forced to work or provide sex against their will, Google">Google said it chose organizations with proven records in combating slavery.

“Many people are surprised to learn there are more people trapped in slavery today than any time in history,” said Jacquelline Fuller, director of charitable giving and advocacy for Google">Google. “The good news is that there are solutions.”

The Washington-based International Justice Mission, a human rights organization that works globally to rescue victims of slavery and sexual exploitation, was chosen by Google">Google to lead the efforts.

It will partner with Polaris Project and Slavery Footprint and a handful of smaller organizations for the multi-year effort to rescue the enslaved, push for better infrastructure and resources for anti-slavery enforcement agencies overseas, as well as raise awareness here in the United States and help countries draft anti-slavery legislation.

“Each year we focus some of our annual giving on meeting direct human need,” Fuller said. “Google">Google chose to spotlight the issue of slavery this year because there is nothing more fundamental than freedom.”

Gary A. Haugen, president of the International Justice Mission, said the coalition would focus on three initiatives: A $3.5 million intervention project to fight forced labor in India; a $4.5 million advocacy campaign in India to educate and protect the vulnerable; and a $1.8 million plan to mobilize Americans on behalf of the millions currently at risk of slavery or waiting for rescue around the world.

The remaining $1.7 million will go to several smaller organizations working to combat slavery.

“It’s hard for most Americans to believe that slavery and human trafficking are still massive problems in our world,” said Haugen. “Google">Google’s support now makes it possible for IJM to join forces with two other leading organizations so we can bring to bear our unique strengths in a united front.”

Those leading the U.S. efforts will meet in Washington on Wednesday to kick off the joint initiative.

The project will focus on improved legislation to protect vulnerable children and adults in the United States, as well as a push for more accountability and transparency in the U.S. supply chain by retailers and manufacturers to make sure their products are “slave-free.”

The trafficking of women for the sex trade is common in big American cities. Some illegal immigrants find themselves forced to work in sweatshops, in private homes as domestic servants or on farms without pay under the threat of deportation.

The new effort will launch new initiatives that ordinary Americans can take to help abolish modern-day slavery, such as understanding how their own clothing or smartphones might contain fabrics or components manufactured by forced labor.

“Whether it’s by calling the national human trafficking hotline, sending a letter to their senator, or using online advocacy tools, millions of Americans will be able to use their voices to ensure that ending this problem becomes a top priority,” said Bradley Myles, executive director of Polaris Project.

Google">Google.org — the philanthropy arm of the Silicon Valley firm — announced the anti-slavery effort as part of its $40 million in end-of-year giving that brings its charitable donations to more than $100 million in 2011. The grants will also support science, technology, engineering and math education; girls’ education in the developing world; and the use of technology for social good.

Justin Dillon, the founder of Slavery Footprint, said the Google">Google grant would allow the movement to move from “anecdote and emotion,” to tangible action that could make a dent in history.

“Having a company like Google">Google recognize the value of our work marks a major turning point for the anti-slavery movement,” said Dillon, whose nonprofit gives consumers some tools to determine whether slaves were used in the making of their goods and teaches them to use social media to sound off about slavery and engage with corporations about their supply chains.

Source : taiwannews.com.tw

Google Maps Shows Street Views of Post-Tsunami Japan [VIDEO]

Google has unveiled an online archive of before and after photos from its Street View cameras, revealing the devastation in Japan after the March tsunami.

“In the case of the post-tsunami imagery of Japan, we hope this particular digital archiving project will be useful to researchers and scientists who study the effects of natural disasters,” wrote Kei Kawai, Senior Product Manager of Street View, in a blog post. “We also believe that the imagery is a useful tool for anyone around the world who wants to better understand the extent of the damage.”

Source : Mashable.com

Google Reader Gets a Redesign, Adds Google+ Integration

Google has begun rolling out a new version of Google Reader, one that sports a brand-new design and deep integration with Google+.
The new Google Reader sports a more spartan interface. It’s similar to the Google Calendar redesign and Gmail makeover the search giant launched earlier this year.

The greater change is the addition of Google+ sharing. Google has replaced the “Like” button with the +1 button, which lets users share content to their Google+ accounts. Reader users with a Google+ login can choose which circles they’d like to share articles to using Google+ snippets.

The Google+ integration replaces the Google Reader social features the company unveiled in 2009. “Integrating with Google+ also helps us streamline Reader overall,” Google Engineer Alan Green said in a blog post. “So starting today we’ll be turning off friending, following, shared items and comments in favor of similar Google+ functionality.”

While Google Reader’s notes got some usage, dropping them in favor of Google+ is the logical move for a company that is now trying to unify all of its social efforts under one banner. The company recently killed off Buzz while adding Google+ to Maps.

What do you think of the new Google Reader? Let us know in the comments.

Source : Mashable.com

Google+ Gets Its Own TV Commercial

Sharing, but like real life. This is the message Google is sending with the first video TV commercial for its social network, Google+, which aired during a Lions vs. Packers football game in the U.S. Thursday.

The ad focuses on all the ways in which Google+ is different from Facebook: organizing your friends, family, acquaintances and colleagues into different Circles, and meeting them in Hangouts.

Video spots demonstrating Google’s products aren’t new, and we’re seeing more and more of them as the Mountain View giant grows. A Google Chrome TV commercial launched this summer featured pop megastar Justin Bieber, and a recent ad for Samsung Google Nexus showcased the features in the new version of Google’s mobile OS, Android 4.0.

Google also recently posted a shorter, music-accompanied video clip dubbed “Google+: Circles Love Story,” which tells a short story through a quick demonstration of Circles. Check it out below.

Source : Mashable.com

Google GoMo Helps Businesses Go Mobile

Acknowledging that having a mobile presence is trickier than it appears, Google launched an initiative called “GoMo” Tuesday that aims to help businesses work out the kinks involved in going mobile.

As Jesse Haines, group marketing manager for Google’s mobile ads, explains in the Google Mobile Ads Blog, GoMo (short for “go mobile”) is designed to help businesses that have set up a mobile presence but find it’s not working as well as it should. In Haines’s example, a company that sells scarves attracts a prospective customer, but that customer is repelled by a site that doesn’t work properly.

“This happens hundreds, even thousands of times every day because most businesses’ websites don’t work well on smartphones,” she says. The post directs readers to HowToGoMo, which includes a view of how your site looks “in mobile” as well as resources to help build your site. The latter includes links to select vendors and lets the visitor qualify themselves as DIYers by the amount they plan to spend and the time frame in which they intend to build their mobile site.

For Google, the goal is to further grow its mobile ad business, which is on a $2.5 billion run rate this year vs. $1 billion last year. Google also expanded its mobile ad formats last month. As usual, Google has included a cute video in its blog post to explain what it’s up to:

Source : Mashable.com

Some Googlers Don't Want Their Kids Using Google Products

Seems many Google executives have children enrolled in the Waldorf schools in Los Altos where computers are not used until the 8th grade and even then only on a limited basis.

As the New York Times reported, computers "are not allowed in the classroom, and the school even frowns on their use at home," and from the number of Silicon Valley executives' families attending the schools seems this double standard is popular.

While Google executive Alan Eagle may "fundamentally reject the notion you need technology aids in grammar school," four plus years ago the company joined the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) Foundation which sponsored giving laptops to children in Third World countries.

"OLPC's mission is to provide a means for learning, self-expression, and exploration to the nearly two billion children of the developing world with little or no access to education."

So give them to everyone except their own children? Do Google execs know something different about child development? Did they themselves not have them and were drawn to the industry because they missed what others had?

Eagle proudly said his fifth grade daughter doesn't know how to use Google and his eighth grade son is just learning his way around the search engine. Guess he doesn't know CEO Larry Page grew up in a house filled with computers and even built a printer out of Legos. Or that Google's co-founder Sergey Brin got his first computer - a Commodore 64 - at age 9.

Steve Jobs, the founders of Yahoo and many others were early users of computers. Eagle's stance seems a little harsh and even a little insulting to Google and its users.

"At Google and all these places, we make technology as brain-dead easy to use as possible," Eagle told the Times.

So who are these 'brain-dead' users? The rest of us who cannot afford to spend over $17,000 a year on elementary school? The children in third world countries?

The school backs its methods with high rates of graduates going to college and gaining post graduate degrees - not for an instance thinking it could be the influence of the educated parents who would see this not happening as failure.

Guess the Doodle 4 Google program will be dropped some time soon. The "competition where we invite K-12 students to use their artistic talents to think big and redesign Google's homepage logo for millions to see. At Google, we believe that dreaming about future possibilities leads to tomorrow's leaders and inventors, so this year we invited U.S. kids to exercise their creative imaginations around the theme, "What I'd like to do someday…"

Guess the Waldorf kids' answers would be use a computer.

Source : http://searchenginewatch.com

Dalai Lama Joins Google+, Plans Hangout With Desmond Tutu

Dalai Lama

The Dalai Lama has officially joined Google+ — and he’s already planning a Hangout with South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu.

The Hangout, announced Friday on the Dalai Lama’s Google+ profile, will take place Oct. 8 at 10:30 a.m. South African time (GMT+2.00). That’s 4:30 a.m. ET in the U.S. The live video conversation will be part of the Inaugural Desmond Tutu Peace Lecture in Cape Town, South Africa. The event coincides with the archbishop’s 80th birthday on Oct. 7. A link to the Hangout will be available approximately 20 to 30 minutes before it starts.

The Dalai Lama had originally planned on visiting South Africa in person this weekend, but visa woes prevented the holy leader from entering the country. However, that didn’t stop the Dalai Lama from posting a video (below) on Google+, wishing the archbishop — an activist who first rose to prominence opposing apartheid in the 1980s — a happy birthday.

This was all done on the same day the Dalai Lama joined Google+. Another post on the social network welcomes the Dalai Lama’s potential Google+ followers with a mission statement of sorts: “He frequently states that his life is guided by three major commitments: the promotion of basic human values or secular ethics in the interest of human happiness, the fostering of inter-religious harmony and the welfare of the Tibetan people, focusing on the survival of their identity, culture and religion.”

While the Dalai Lama may be new to Google+, this isn’t his first social media presence. He also has a Twitter account with more than 2.5 million followers, along with a Facebook page with more than 2 million fans.

Google Promotes Online Safety With 'Good to Know' Campaign

Google is about to launch its first online safety campaign. Teaming with the Citizens Advice Bureau (CAB), Google will promote “safe computer usage” for users: by logging out of computers when they're finished using them, specialized child protection, use of cookies in web browsers, and 'two-factor authorization' which sees the user entering a password and then a unique verification code sent to their mobile device.

Gillan Guy, the CAB's chief executive, said that “Information is a powerful tool for preventing problems from arising in the first and safety, personal data and identity theft are among the top concerns of people of using internet”.

Google's Communications and Policy Manager, Anthony House, said that “Everyone wants to stay safe online, but many people aren't confident that they know how to.” Rather than promoting a product, Google aims to better inform users of how to protect themselves against security concerns in online usage. The campaign will be known as “Good to Know”, and will be accompanied by the website www.google.co.uk/goodtoknow.

Most users are relatively clueless about how to best secure their computers and surf the net safely, not because they aren't interested in protection, but because technical geek lingo loses something in translation with the general public because the terminology is complicated. The advice is meant to be simple, useful, and educational.

Google & the Citizens Advice Bureau created a few tips to stay safe online:

1. Always make sure to have a strong password. Try to always have a unique password to you that no one else will know. Using a long password will keep it safe. Try to always have a mixture of letters, numbers, and symbols. Some people remember their password with a song or lyrics or a mixture of the two.
2. When you get a suspicious email with personal information on it, go directly to the site: don't click on the link in the email. Unless you're expecting the email, it's probably not from them and is known as a "Phishing attack" that's trying to get your personal info and steal from you.
3. Always look for 'https' in the URL. A website is running through a secure connection when it's through https. This will safeguard your emails, credit card numbers, and all other info from watching eyes.
4. Just as you make sure not to leave your front door open, you need to make sure you're always signing out of your computer. Make sure to always sign out of social media accounts and all other accounts that you may have signed into.
5. Try and only use safe networks that are secure. Internet cafes are nice but not always the safest place for you to be browsing the Internet.
6. With all the apps out there, make sure that you always have the latest app. Make sure you trust all your apps and the sources your apps come from. Always lock and passcode lock your phone. Never store personal details on your phone because anyone could take it and have all your info.
7. Two-step verification is a must if accounts offer it. This will make you or anyone else go through two different steps of verification to access your account – much like Facebook when you login. You have to login and then tell which computer you're logging in from, then it texts you. By doing this it will keep your account safe.

In a stunning report last week, Google's quarterly UK revenues of $1 billion surged 33 percent greater than previous reports, reaching a total of $9.7 billion or £6.2 billion.

Google Places Now Get Automatic Updates from Users, Crawls

Google is giving more trust to user reports on the address, hours, and operating name of businesses. Submitted updates will show up regardless of business verification, though business owners will receive a notice and have the option to halt the change.

The Automatic Listing Updates

According to the official announcement of the change, Google is introducing a streamlined process for updates to potentially incorrect listings. In instances where data such as the business hours, address, or name of a location are submitted, "the organic listing will automatically be updated and the business owner will be sent an email notification about the change."

Additionally, Google is working with partners to receive up-to-date information about businesses and has trained its web-crawler to look for current business data. In cases where Google's systems gets new information from a trusted source, they'll make an automatic update.

Meanwhile, business owners will get an email indicating that a change is going to be made. According to Blumenthals, the message from Google indicates that, "your listing data on our consumer properties such as Google and Google Maps" is going to be changed, but that "We use many sources to determine the accuracy of our listing data and to provide the best possible experience for business owners and consumers."

Then, after receiving a summary of the submitted changes, the business owner is given the option to "prevent any of these changes from being made on your Place page and listing" through their Google Places account.

Google states that they're pushing for "a digital representation of the real world" that doesn't rely on business owners "remembering to update their Google Places account." Instead, Google is relying on "a neighborhood local or a loyal customer" who wants to help out by providing the correct information.

Businesses sending out promotions via AdWords and AdWords Express won't see changes to their ads, but all other segments of Places will be impacted. While this feature has already seen official release, its full implementation seems to be gradual.

Is Google Making Businesses Vulnerable?

Honestly, considering the abuses of the previous system, this seems like a brash move. Even with an improved system of vetting and a window wherein business owners can negate a change, the potential for abuse both directly through Google and through manipulating "trusted external sources" is highly visible.

Businesses could still become the target of shut-down campaigns, only now the false data would be implemented automatically and the business owner would have to back-track to input the appropriate data anew.

It seems a proper solution would be to offer a "lock/unlock" feature for business owners, allowing them to declare permanent information or set aside certain fields that won't be updated automatically. Meanwhile, since any business owner who doesn't have their email address attached correctly is left in the open, it's absolutely vital that you both verify your business and ensure that your account is attached to an email address you check frequently.

Google Present Nike Shoes

Now Get Google and Twitter Designs Painted Nike Shoes. Get the latest ...

CTRL + C Your Way to Instant Search Queries & Social Sharing

Quick Pitch: Click.to turns copy, pasting and sharing or searching into a single action.


Genius Idea: You’re just one CTRL + C command away from copying content to your favorite app or service.

Select, copy, open application, paste and submit. We repeat these actions on a daily basis any time we want to share links with friends and followers on Facebook or Twitter, query a search engine or ecommerce site, and grab videos or images to send to colleagues via email.

Click.to, an add-on for Windows 7, XP or Vista, packages up all these actions into the CTRL + C command. Once installed, highlight whatever video, text or image content you want to look up, post, share or save, press CTRL + C and select the app icon of your liking.

“Click.to extends the most used short cut in the world: CTRL + C,” explains co-founder Peter Oehler.

Should you want to quickly Google a few words in a text document, Click.to comes to the rescue. Instead of selecting the text, opening a browser and pasting it into Google, you can copy the text and hit the Google button in the Click.to pop-up — voilà, you just CRTL + C’d your way to instant search results. Rinse and repeat.

Click.to works in much the same for sharing content on social networks. Say you want to post a picture to Facebook. “Click.to will start your browser automatically, it will select www.facebook.com, log into your account, choose picture upload and publish it on your wall … with one click,” Oehler explains.

This simple, little convenience could certainly save you a lot of time, especially since Click.to”s quick copy-to third-party service list is quite exhaustive and includes support for Facebook, Google, Google Maps, Gmail, YouTube, Twitter, Flickr, Box.net, Wikipedia, Evernote, Amazon, Pastebin, Outlook, Word, Excel and others. You can even click to convert text into a PDF, and create your own shortcuts for the web services and programs of your choosing.

Best of all, perhaps, is that Click.to works system-wide. So what’s the catch? Click.to is PC-only for the time being. A Mac-compatible version is said to be in the works.

Click.to, released in early July, is a product from Axonic Informationssysteme GmbH, a Germany-based startup

Could Google Fast Flip Have Survived on Tablets?

Google will discontinue news-reading tool Fast Flip, to shift resources to its more widely used products. It will be removed from Google News and Labs in the coming days, though its approach to web content display will be integrated into other tools, Google announced on its blog.

Fast Flip, which celebrates its second birthday this month, is at the top of the list when sorting Google Labs projects by popularity. The tool aims to replicate the print-reading experience online by allowing users to browse stories more quickly. It came at a time when more news organizations were willing to experiment with web content distribution and boasted it had an impressive list of launch partners, including The New York Times, The Washington Post and Fast Company. These media companies share ad revenue generated through Fast Flip with Google.

Though the product didn’t show much promise from the start, it may have seen success if it had been reworked as a tablet app. As evidenced by CNN’s acquisition of Zite and AOL’s release of Editions, news organizations are shifting focus to optimize mobile reader experiences in a big way.

News aggregation apps Flipboard and Pulse are seeing growing audiences as tablets continue to prove themselves as great content consumption devices. Google may have been better off creating a feature to simplify browsing news on a tablet rather than the conventional web.

Fast Flip is one of nine in a batch of products to be discontinued from Google Labs. The company announced it would shutter Labs experiments shortly after releasing its second-quarter earnings results in mid-July.

Other Labs products Google will shut down:

Aardvark:  Social search product that helps people answer each others’ questions.

Desktop: Gives instant access to data while online or offline.

Fast Flip: Provides a faster, richer news content browsing and reading experience.

Google Maps API for Flash: Allows ActionScript developers to integrate Google Maps into their applications.

Google Pack: Makes it easy to download and install a package of Google and third-party applications.

Google Web Security: Protects against web malware attacks.

Image Labeler: Helps people explore and label images on the web.

Notebook: Helps people combine clipped URLs from the web and free-form notes into documents they can share and publish.

Sidewiki: A browser sidebar that lets people contribute and read information alongside any web page.

Subscribed Links: Enables developers to create specialized search results that were added to the normal Google search results on relevant queries for subscribed users.

Would you have used Google Fast Flip on a tablet? Tell us in the comments below.