Google is marking any LGBT-related query this month with a rainbow-colored banner under the search box.
The Mountain View, Calif.-based Company is once-again celebrating LGBT Pride Month, as it has down for the last five years in a row, by adding a bit of color to its search.
U.S. President Barack Obama declared June as LGBT Pride Month for 2012. The month-long stance is against discrimination and violence toward the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender community, with promotion for equal and civil rights.
Gizmodo AU claimed this morning to have reviewed a training document related to Google’s upcoming tablet that is set to be unveiled at Google I/O this month. While we have had several leaks in the months leading up to the event, today’s report —if legitimate—provides us with some exact specs for the Nexus-branded, Asus-built slate. According to Gizmodo, the tablet will hit at least Australia in July and be the first to run Jelly Bean with the following specs: Expand Expanding Close
Google unveiled its “Project Re: Brief” ad campaign in March, which re-imagined four classic commercials, and now the company has published an hour-long documentary of its marketing venture on YouTube.
The four re-imagined classic commercials are Coca-Cola’s “Hilltop” from 1971, Alka-Seltzer’s 1972 commercial, Volvo’s “Drive it like you hate it” from 1963, and Avis’ “We try harder” campaign from 1962. Google’s in-house advertising team and several other agencies— including the creators of the original campaigns—re-created all the ads. Each video is available on Google’s Project Re: Brief website.
“Re: Brief is not just about the ads themselves. It’s also about the creative process behind them: bringing ‘old school’ advertising legends and technologists into the same room to create digital ads that consumers love as much as they loved the iconic campaigns of yesterday,” explained Project Re: Brief Lead Aman Govil on the Official Google Blog. “To share this experience, today we premiered the documentary film Project Re: Brief, directed by Emmy winner Doug Pray, at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity—also available on YouTube.”
Govil continued:
The documentary follows the story of the five art directors and copywriters who made the original ads as they come out of retirement to “Re: Brief” their classic campaigns: Harvey Gabor (Coca-Cola’s “Hilltop); Amil Gargano (Volvo’s “Drive it like you hate it”); Paula Green (Avis’ “We try harder”); and Howie Cohen and Bob Pasqualina (Alka-Seltzer’s “I can’t believe I ate the whole thing”). While major shifts in technology have reshaped the advertising business, as we learned from our heroes of the past, the basic tenets of storytelling haven’t changed. We found these icons’ ideas, wisdom and passion for great advertising inspiring and hope you do as well.
One Wall Street analyst is calling into question Google’s co-founder, Larry Page, and his health, due to the executive’s notable absence from the company shareholders’ meeting on Thursday.
Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt, who bequeathed his CEO title to Page in April 2011, told shareholders that the chief executive “lost his voice.” Schmidt further revealed Page would not attend the Google I/O developer conference next week or Google’s Q2 earnings call next month (as seen in the video above). Page will, however, maintain his post duties and continue an active role at Google while his voice recuperates over the next few weeks.
According to Canada.com, a Google representative explained that Page was “asked to rest.” No more information on the CEO’s mysterious voice condition is available at this time, but JP Morgan analyst Doug Anmuth debated Google’s excuse for Page in a note to investors today:
DroidLife just posted the above screenshot that confirms “Jelly Bean,” otherwise known as Android 4.1, as the next candy-flavored version of Google’s mobile operating system.
The website first spotted the news in the XDA Developers forum, where a user posted a similar image for the unlocked Galaxy Nexus available on Google Play. One cannot help but wonder if Jelly Bean will unveil at the Google I/O conference that is just around the corner.
In a post on the Android Developers blog, Google today outlined how it will be improving the ability for developers and app users to connect with one another through Google Play. Starting with an initial rollout today for Top Developers, devs will now have the ability to reply to user reviews from within the Google Play Android Developer Cosnole:
Developers can gather additional information, provide guidance, and — perhaps most importantly — let users know when their feature requests have been implemented…We’ll also notify the user who wrote the review via email that the developer has responded. Users can then contact the developer directly if additional followup is needed or update their review.
Google noted it will begin to offer the feature to additional developers as it gathers feedback on the feature from developers and users. Expand Expanding Close
In a post on the Official Google Blog, Google today outlined the work it has done on a new initiative called the “Endangered Languages Project.” In partnership with the Alliance for Linguistic Diversity, Google put together a new website with the goal of allowing people to “find and share the most up-to-date and comprehensive information about endangered languages.”
Documenting the 3,000+ languages that are on the verge of extinction (about half of all languages in the world) is an important step in preserving cultural diversity, honoring the knowledge of our elders and empowering our youth. Technology can strengthen these efforts by helping people create high-quality recordings of their elders (often the last speakers of a language), connecting diaspora communities through social media and facilitating language learning.
As part of the project, the website will allow people to upload content to help document over 3,000 languages that are on the brink of extinction. Google gave an example of materials that have already been uploaded to the website, including: “18th-century manuscripts to modern teaching tools like video and audio language samples and knowledge-sharing articles.” The post also noted the project will aid people in creating and uploading “high-quality recordings of their elders (often the last speakers of a language),” which allows communities to connect through social networking and provide tools to facilitate language learning.
Going forward, Google will allow a number of organizations already involved in preserving the dying languages to run its project: Expand Expanding Close
Nuance just released a significant update to its Swype keyboard software that it acquired last year.
The entire UI is revamped. Users can still quick-swipe for input, but the keyboard now offers multimodal support with the option to press keys and initiate Nuance’s “Next Word Prediction” technology. Swype’s built-in dictionary actually learns over time and crops words from emails and texts for easier communication. Users also have the ability to handwrite or trace letters, words, or symbols, or they can click the Dragon Diction button to launch integrated voice-recognition.
The latest version of Swype is now in beta, but it is not compatible with all Android devices.
Google Play is offering a spontaneous collection of deals today for apps, music, and books through its “Longest Day of the Year” sale.
Today is more commonly known as “Summer Solstice” for the Northern Hemisphere, which is when the longest period of daylight occurs, and Google is celebrating by slashing prices. A slew of popular apps are now just 99 cents each, “beach reads” are $1.99 a piece, and many famous albums are marked at $2.99 a title.
A selection of the discounted apps includes Draw Something and Shazam Encore, while albums span everything from the Rolling Stones’ “Brussels Affair” to Rihanna’s “Loud.” Books are more sparse, however, with “Endure” by Carrie Jones and “Summer Days” by Susan Mallery. But, hey—a deal is a deal.
Google just announced new custom themes will come to Gmail that allows users to upload their own background images (or select from Google+ photos), browse from a selection of “Featured Photos,” or enter a URL of any image. The video above pretty much speaks for itself, but Google noted it would roll out the new themes for users over the next couple of days with both Light and Dark options.
You can upload your own images directly, select from your Google+ photos or simply paste any image URL. Or, if you don’t have a particular image in mind, you can browse our searchable Featured Photos section to find one that speaks to you. With so many great options, it may be hard to choose, so to get a sense of the images available, try searching for ‘hdr scenery’ or ‘bokeh wallpaper’ in the Featured tab.
Cities available (US only): Atlanta, Austin, Baltimore, Boston, Brooklyn, Charlotte, Chicago, Columbus, Dallas, Denver, Detroit, Fort Worth, Houston, Indianapolis, Kansas City, Long Beach, Los Angeles, Miami, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, NYC, Philadelphia, Phoenix, Pittsburgh, Portland, Oakland / East Bay, Oklahoma City, Omaha, Orlando, Sacramento, Salt Lake City, San Antonio, San Diego, San Francisco, San Jose, Seattle, St. Paul, St. Louis, Tampa and Washington D.C.
Instant savings, just around the corner: Quickly discover offers near you in map view or search for deals by category to easily find the right deal for you.
See & use the deals you want, when you want them: All of your purchased and saved offers are tracked in “My Offers,” for easy access from your iPhone or online.
Savings made simple: Instantly redeem most offers with your iPhone, without having to print vouchers.
Never miss a great deal: Get notifications when new deals are available or when a deal that you’ve purchased or saved is about to expire.
The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office just granted Project Glass a patent that protects the trackpad feature of Google Glasses.
Google co-founder Sergey Brin appeared with his wife, Anne Wojcicki, on California Lieutenant Governor Gavin Newsom’s Current TV show last month to briefly let the politician demo a pair of Google Glasses. During “The Gavin Newsom Show” interview (above), Brin gave the world a glimpse as to how the space-age spectacles work.
Viewers immediately noticed a trackpad-like control on the right side of the augmented-reality glasses, but the USPTO just protected the feature by granting Project Glass a patent for the trackpad. The patent covers a sensor device, for either side, that tracks gestures and finely controls the heads-up display. The Mountain View, Calif.-based Company also detailed several gestures that work with the trackpad—such as scrolling, tapping, or flipping—to provide visible, semi-transparent options.
Google wants to stop YouTube-MP3.org from ripping audio within YouTube’s videos.
TorrentFreak obtained a June 8-dated letter where the Mountain View, Calif.-based Company threatened to take legal action against the conversion website, which, according to Google’s numbers, rakes 1.3-million daily visitors.
Google’s video-sharing platform is free and provides content that is embeddable or accessible through its API, while YouTube-MP3.org is free, pulls audio from YouTube videos, and then converts those files into downloadable MP3s. Apparently, despite the API that gives developers access to many features, pirating any sound directly violates YouTube’s Terms of Service agreement.
The leaked letter addresses the website’s owner, Philip. In the warning, YouTube’s Associate Product Counsel Harris Cohen cited the platform’s terms for API, where he maintained that separating, isolating, or modifying “the audio or video components of any YouTube audiovisual content made available through the YouTube API” is strictly prohibited.
Cohen threatened “legal consequences” for YouTube-Mp3.org, and he gave the website a week to comply. TorrentFreak spoke with Philip, who said YouTube does not want to negotiate. He also mentioned Google immediately blocked his website’s servers from accessing YouTube.
Google’s Vice President of Product Management Bradley Horowitz announced a Google+ partnership with Flipboard and teased an enterprise version of the social network at Le Web 2012 in London this morning, but he also demonstrated Hangouts…on an iPad.
According to TheNextWeb, the Flipboard partnership will stream Google+ feeds into the app as part of the Mountain View, Calif.-based Company’s new Google+ APIs that now sport limited availability for developers. The integration will also allow Flipboard users to get access to posts, media, and other data without visiting Google+ directly. Other social networks on Flipboard include Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Tumblr.
Horowitz further demonstrated Google+ Hangouts at the conference with an iPad. TheNextWeb’s Jamillah Knowles was on-hand to ask the executive why he chose Apple’s tablet over an Android device for the conference, but his response was vague (as heard in the audio clip above).
The Googler was also obscure in regards to numbers. He noted the 170 million-user base for Google+ as a “stale” estimate, and he would not give specific stats on whether Google+ apps prod interaction. He did mention, however, that Google has dreams for its social network in the enterprise.
We heard several reports in the past that Google was working on various evolutions of its Voice Actions platform for Android. We heard of “Project Majel” in December, which, according to reports, is the codename for a new voice-controlled assistant app similar to Siri. In March, TechCrunch reported on a similar project dubbed “Google Assistant.” According to a new report from the Wall Street Journal, Google is accelerating its plans to launch a competitor to Apple’s Siri:
Google, meanwhile, has accelerated plans to launch its own Siri competitor that would work on Android-powered devices, people familiar with the matter have said.
The report does not offer any additional details on the project, but it noted: “In coming weeks, Google is expected to unveil a lower-priced Android tablet that it developed with Asustek Computer.” Google recently acquired Clever Sense, the makers of popular local recommendations app Alfred, and some have speculated the technology could be included in Google Siri competitor. Many expect the Google tablet, mentioned by WSJ,to unveil later this month at Google I/O, where we could also possibly see some of Jelly Bean and this rumored assistant feature.
Google launched a preview of its PageSpeed Insights Chrome Developer Tools extension last year, but it just released version 2.0 today.
The add-on analyzes web page performance and offers specific suggestions on how to make them load faster. Google Software Engineers Libo Song and Bryan McQuade gave an example on the Official Developers Blog:
For instance, PageSpeed Insights can inform you about an expensive JavaScript call that blocks the renderer for too long, remind you about that new photo on the front page of your web site that you might have forgotten to resize or optimize, or recommend changing the way you load third-party content so it no longer blocks the page load. PageSpeed Insights for Chrome is a Developer Tools extension that analyzes all aspects of the page load, including resources, network, DOM, and the timeline. If you’re already familiar with the Developer Tools, you’ll find that PageSpeed Insights integrates with a toolset you’re already using.
PageSpeed Insights also runs the open-source PageSpeed Insights SDK securely to optimize images, CSS, JavaScript and HTML resources on a website. The PageSpeed Insights extension is available now on the Chrome Web Store.
According to a press release from New Jersey-based Magnolia Broadband (via TNW), Google acquired the company’s more than 50 patents related to its “Mobile Transmit Diversity beam forming technology.” The cost of the IP acquisition was not disclosed, but Magnolia noted it has invested more than $60 million in patenting and developing the technology. The acquisition was rumored earlier this month but just confirmed by Magnolia today.
As for what Google will get, the press release said the patent portfolio consists of over 10 years of R&D, testing, and development of “methods for increasing spectrum utilization (network capacity), expanding coverage, improving uplink transmission speeds at the cell edge, and improving device battery life.” Google will have access to the technology through the deal, but Magnolia will own the patents and continue to license them to other companies.
Google’s reduction of energy use for servers and server cooling.
Google wants businesses to make Google Apps their primary productivity suite, so the company is recruiting at full swing today with a new blog post that discloses a few stats about its energy efficiency.
Google Apps is a Google service that features several Web applications like traditional office suites. The services vary per edition but generally include Docs, Gmail, Calendar, Talk, Sites, Groups, Video, and Marketplace. Its popularity among businesses and academicians is rapidly increasing due to enhanced sharing features, accessibility, and cost.
According to Senior Vice President for Technical Infrastructure Urs Hoelzle on the Official Google Blog:
At Google, we’re obsessed with building energy efficient data centers that enable cloud computing. Besides helping you be more productive, cloud-based services like Google Apps can reduce energy use, lower carbon emissions and save you money in the process. Last year, we crunched the numbers and found that Gmail is up to 80 times more energy-efficient than running traditional in-house email. We’ve sharpened our pencils again to see how Google Apps as a whole—documents, spreadsheets, email and other applications—stacks up against the standard model of locally hosted services. Our results show that a typical organization can achieve energy savings of about 65-85% by migrating to Google Apps.
Hoelzle further explained how lower energy use equals less carbon pollution. The executive supported this statement with an anecdote about the U.S. General Administration. It switched to Google Apps for Government to save $285,000 annually at a 93 percent cost reduction, and it reduced energy consumption by 90-percent and carbon emissions by 85-percent.
As noted in a recent post on the Official Google Blog, Google recently made changes to the Transparency Report that launched a couple of years ago to report data on “government requests.” The interactive reports, which are available here, already included user data requests from courts and government agencies, real-time and historical traffic from various Google services worldwide, and removal requests from both governments and copyright owners. Google is adding data related to government requests today for user information and the removal of blogs posts and videos made from July 2011 to December 2011:
Today we’re releasing data showing government requests to remove blog posts or videos or hand over user information made from July to December 2011… Unfortunately, what we’ve seen over the past couple years has been troubling, and today is no different. When we started releasing this data in 2010, we also added annotations with some of the more interesting stories behind the numbers. We noticed that government agencies from different countries would sometimes ask us to remove political content that our users had posted on our services. We hoped this was an aberration. But now we know it’s not… For the six months of data we’re releasing today, we complied with an average of 65% of court orders, as opposed to 47% of more informal requests.
An example of some of the requests is outlined by Google’s Senior Policy Analyst Dorothy Chou: Expand Expanding Close
Speaking at the Reuters Media and Technology Summit yesterday, YouTube chief Salar Kamangar talked about the video service’s desire to include subscription-based offerings that would possibly rival traditional cable channels. Reutersexplained:
Cable channels with smaller audiences will in the future migrate to the Web and become available on an “a la carte” basis, Kamangar said at the Reuters Media and Technology Summit on Thursday… Some of those channels, which Kamangar said receive little or no affiliate fees from cable distributors, could be one of the viable offerings for Google-owned YouTube as it weighs selling subscriptions to some of the hundreds of millions of people who watch videos on the website every month.
Developers Wooga and PopCap recently announced that they are pulling a few games from Google+.
Wooga develops free-to-play browser-based games for social networks and is currently the world’s fourth-largest game developer by monthly active users on the Facebook platform as of April. The Berlin, Germany-based firm confirmed that it took down Monster World from Google’s social network offerings and said more removals are coming.
“We decided to remove certain games from Google+ because we have a much larger following on Facebook and they are active users,” said a Wooga representative to AllThingsD.
According to Social Games Observer, Wooga will further cut Bubble Island and Diamond Dash on July 1. Meanwhile, PopCap Games is a Seattle, Wash.-based subsidiary of Electronic Arts that also confirmed it is eliminating titles from Google+. The company revealed its Bejeweled game would no longer be live starting on Monday.
“PopCap has decided to suspend Bejeweled Blitz on Google+ to redeploy our resources to other adaptations of Bejeweled. Certainly, Google is a valuable gaming partner for PopCap and EA, and we’ll continue to develop for Google platforms,” explained a PopCap spokesperson to AllThingsD.
Hangouts on Google+ are often touted as one of the social networks flagship features, which is why it is not too surprising that Google has now integrated YouTube into the feature. Available through a “YouTube” link at the top of the Hangouts screen, after users have allowed access to the app, members of the hangout can add videos for everyone to view in a familiar YouTube playlist on the right. The playing video airs in the large part of the screen above the active members, while everyone sees and can edit the same videos or playlist. Google explained:
Everyone can add videos in the Hangout through a search tool in the app, or remove the videos you don’t like. All your friends in the Hangout can drag and drop videos to sort the order in the playlist, or skip forward or backward to play the next one. Click the “Push to talk” button to chat with the group to give props to the best curator, or to hand out reprimands to the friend who keeps adding the 10-hour Nyan Cat video.
As noted byBGR, Google’s own Matias Duarte announced on his Google+ page that Android, specifically Ice Cream Sandwich, has been awarded the Gold Prize for best platform at the Parsons School of Design’s 2012 User Experience Awards:
Ice Cream Sandwich won the Gold Prize for best platform experience at Parsons’ 2012 User Experience Awards! Way to go team!
Thanks to Parsons for hosting a great event and thanks to IXDA, NYC UPA, and NYC CHI. We need more celebrations of UX like this!
Google released sworn denials (PDF) on Tuesday from nine Googlers who claimed they had no knowledge about data mining in the Street View mapping project.
Google Street View is a service highlighted in Google Maps and Google Earth that offers panoramic views of streets. It launched in 2007 in the United States and expanded to many cities and rural areas worldwide. The project ambitiously maps the world’s streets with photographs, but the plotting venture allegedly cropped unencrypted Internet data from wireless networks for roughly three years until 2010.
Google’s Street View automobiles gathered sensitive information, including private dispatches, as it roamed many boulevards, avenues, roads, highways, lanes, and thoroughfares across the globe. Tuesday’s unveiled declarations by nine Google engineers featured redacted names and titles, while it explicitly disclosed that the Mountain View, Calif.-based Company employees did not know about the misconduct. The Googlers were in the dark, because either content collection was not a part of their job, or they did not assess given project documentation.
It eventually became publicly clear that Street View gathered unencrypted information, like emails and Internet searches beamed between personal computers from within homes, thanks to German regulators who began to probe the mapping service in their country. When the findings came to light, Google fingered a nameless engineer as being solely responsible for the action, which resulted in a Federal Communications Commission inquiry.
The search engine did not break any laws, the regulatory body found, but it did obstruct the investigation. The F.C.C. fined the company $25,000, despite the sworn documents having been originally provided as part of the inquiry into Street View.
