1/5/10

Our new approach to buying a mobile phone -- Google
Android was developed with one simple idea: Open up mobile devices to enable greater innovation that will benefit users everywhere.

12/22/09

12/21/09

Google personalized search for everyone -- from Liberal Education Today by Bryan Alexander
Google extended its Personalized Search functionality to every user last week.  This means that every Web search using Google – the world’s most popular search engine – is now inflected by previous searches from that same computer. According to Google, this means “customize[d] search results for you based upon 180 days of search activity linked to an anonymous cookie in your browser.” One leading search observer thinks this is extremely important.

12/17/09

Transliteration goes global -- from Google
Most of us use a keyboard to enter text; it's one of the most basic activities we perform on a computer. However even this simple activity can be cumbersome in many parts of the world. If you've ever tried to type in a non-Roman script using a Roman keyboard, you know that it can be difficult to do. Many of us at Google's Bangalore office experienced this problem firsthand. Roman keyboards are the norm in India, making it difficult to type in Indian languages. We decided to tackle this problem by making it very easy to type phonetically using Roman characters and we launched this service as Google Transliteration.

Google Browser Size -- from Konigi.com and Google
...is a visualization of browser window sizes for web sites. Enter a URL into the app, and the page is displayed behind an overlay showing the percentage of browser users who are able to view the visible portion, based on their browser's available viewport size, and their display's screen resolution. For example, the "90%" contour means that 90% of people visiting the site have their browser window open to at least this size or larger.

Google: Mobile Gmail Exemplifies HTML5’s Power -- from webmonkey by Michael Calore

12/10/09

Connecting Google Apps Education Edition with Blackboard -- from Google blog by George Kroner, a Developer Relations Engineer for Blackboard

Also see:
Bboogle is software that lets you embed Google Documents (including spreadsheets, and presentations) and Google Calendars in a Blackboard course site. Everyone with access to the course can get to linked Google Documents without logging in a second time. Students and instructors are automatically added as collaborators, even if they join after the link is made.

12/8/09

Google Goggles and Mobile Learning -- from Amar Jadhav
Yesterday Google released a visual search engine called Google Goggles. It is available right now as an application for Android 1.6+ (i.e. Donut or Eclair) based mobile devices. It uses several sophisticated image recognition techniques like object recognition, OCR, face matching, etc. This will prove useful for m-learning - users can take a snapshot of any object and Google Goggles will provide relevant information about it. Leveraged appropriately, Goggles has great potential to be a powerful augmented reality application.

Google launches five new services and tweaks -- from Bryan Alexander

From DSC:
Though the above image/items are for K-12, Google leads the way in university email (according to the 2009 Campus Computing Project survey where 59% of 4-year universities and colleges using hosted email named Google as their provider). It may not be long before they package up a suite of items for higher ed.

12/7/09

GoogleApps in the Classroom -- Miguel Guhlin

Along these lines, also see https://sites.google.com/site/learningcontinuity/

12/4/09

Using Google Reader to Streamline Your Reading -- from ProfHacker.com by Amy Cavender

12/3/09

New Google Tools Help Speed Up Your Website -- from Webmonkey by Scott Gilbertson

11/30/09

Moving To Google Apps for Education -- from Serendipity35

11/23/09

         

 

How Google’s Chrome OS is pushing us to the clouds -- from Royal Pingdom by Devindra Hardawar

11/20/09

Releasing the Chromium OS open source project -- from Google
In July we announced that we were working on Google Chrome OS, an open source operating system for people who spend most of their time on the web. Today [11/19/09] we are open-sourcing the project as Chromium OS. We are doing this early, a year before Google Chrome OS will be ready for users, because we are eager to engage with partners, the open source community and developers. As with the Google Chrome browser, development will be done in the open from this point on. This means the code is free, accessible to anyone and open for contributions. The Chromium OS project includes our current code base, user interface experiments and some initial designs for ongoing development. This is the initial sketch and we will color it in over the course of the next year.

11/16/09

More Google Wave Education Resources -- from Serendipity35

Heads in the Cloud | anseo.net -- from John Pearce, Educational Consultant
Simon Lewis is a great Irish educator and this very practical post explores how he is using Google Docs across his school. I particularly like the way he uses the tools to meet real needs by fashioning them in very innovative ways.

11/13/09

Google poised to become your phone company -- from Wired.com by Ryan Singel

11/11/09

Meet Go, Google’s New Programming Language -- from webmonkey by Scott Gilbertson

11/9/09

Inside Google: Challenges and Opportunities -- Calvin grads at Google to speak Friday, November 13, at 4:30 p.m. in SB 382
Nathan Beach and Jack Veenstra both attended Calvin College. Both currently are employed at Google. They will be in town this week to give a presentation at the computer science seminar.

Want to see awesome ways you can use your mobile phone? Do you want to discover a glimpse of how Google continuously improves the quality of search results? Come join Google employees and Calvin graduates, Jack Veenstra and Nathan Beach, to see some cool demos and learn what it is like to work at Google. After the talk, Jack and Nathan will take questions. You may submit questions NOW and vote on other people's questions using Google Moderator.

11/7/09

Create your customized view of the news using Google News
Go to http://www.google.com/news/ and click on the Add Section in the upper right portion of the screen

11/6/09

Google releases Dashboard privacy tool -- from CNN.com by Doug Gross
Ever wonder what information Google knows about you? With a click or two, now you can find out.

11/5/09

Google Wave makes a big splash as it hits the shore -- from San Jose State University's Spartan Daily by Suzanne Yada

10/31/09

Google Wave Use Cases: Education -- from ReadWriteWeb

What Google Wave Means for Students -- from HackCollege

10/29/09

100+ Google Tricks That Will Save You Time in School -- from Online Colleges

10/26/09

The Google Timeline in Video – Brilliant. -- from Digital Inspiration - Technology Blog by Amit

10/19/09

Items on Google Wave from Ray Schroeder

Innovation: The psychology of Google Wave - New Scientist
Innovation is our regular column that highlights emerging technological ideas and where they may lead. Over the past week Google has been rolling out the first invitations to its latest service, a complex "real-time communication and collaboration" system dubbed Google Wave. Instead of sending messages back and forth, users create web-page-like documents called waves that others can modify or comment on, using a combination of features more usually seen separately in email, wikis, instant messaging and social networking.

A week using Google Wave: the early verdict: Google's new IM and email hybrid is all about the platform - Dan Grabham, TechRadar
It's a collaboration tool for all, then. But an even more essential thing to note is that Google is thinking as Wave in terms of a platform – that was clear from our recent interview with Google's Communications Manager Anthony House: "The goal is to create new platforms and to see whether new platforms will flourish or not rather than just building a product." Certainly Twitter is a great example of such a service – the website has become relatively inconsequential to the process of tweeting and keeping up with those you follow. Google will make APIs available for anybody that wants to develop for the platform. Also key to Wave's success is the advancement of the number of plug-ins. Google says the service is designed to "communicate and collaborate in real time". At the moment though that's hardly possible – only a handful of plug-ins are currently available. You can put a "yes, no, maybe" poll into your Wave, a Map and a TripAdvisor app.

Google Wave: A Music Industry Primer - Music Ally
Google Wave! It’s The Future! Convergent Communication 3.0! The bleeding zeitgesty edge of real-time innovation! But, er, what exactly IS it, and what potential does it have – if any – for artists, labels and the music industry? In a nutshell, it’s like email meets instant messaging meets social networking meets document editing meets online collaboration. Sort of. Or, to relate it specifically to Google products, it’s like Gmail, Google Talk and Google Docs all mashed up into one service, with Facebook-style applications thrown in for customisation.

Google Wave: first impressions - Will Cooper, New Media Age
First impressions are mixed: it looks like a glorified instant messaging service with an interface that isn’t exactly instinctive, but when you’re in full conversational flow with multiple people you can see where Google is going with this. The main Wave interface is pretty similar to Gmail, with your inbox, folders, contacts and so on in the left-hand column and a central column, when in inbox mode, with all your active conversations or ‘waves’. On the right-hand side is a column in which all the interactions take place.

 

10/16/09

The Killer App: Google Apps and Moodle Integration? -- my thanks to Daniel Laninga, in the T&L Digital Studio, for this resource

10/14/09

5 great resources to find out about Google Wave -- from Jane's E-Learning Pick of the Day by Jane Hart
Have you got your Google Wave invite yet?  Even if you haven't, you can find out more about it in these articles and postings, and what it can do for education and training.

1. Google Wave's Best Use Cases, Lifehacker, 14 October 2009
2. Google Wave will revolutionise online classroom instruction, So You Want To Teach, 30 September 2009
3. Google Wave: a complete guide, Mashable, 29 September 2009
4. Learning Waves from Google, Donald Clark, 6 June 2009
5. 6 ways that Wave is going to change your business, career and life, thinkVitamin, June 2009

Want to read more, here's our Google Wave reading list

And the Google Wave site is here.

10/09/09

Google Apps for K-12 Education Webinar Video -- from Free Technology for Teachters
Earlier this week Google offered a free webinar featuring the story of a school district that saved $35,000 by transitioning its email services to Google Apps for Education. The webinar was held at at a time that might have been inconvenient for a lot of people in education. If you were not able to attend the webinar, but you wanted to, you can now watch all of the webinar in this YouTube video.

10/8/09

Could Google Wave Replace Course-Management Systems? -- from The Chronicle by Jeff Young
Google argues that its new Google Wave system could replace e-mail by blending instant messaging, wikis, and image and document sharing into one seamless communication interface. But some college professors and administrators are more excited about Wave's potential to be a course-management-system killer.

10/7/09

Free calling now to Hawaii and Alaska -- from Google
When we launched Google Voice, we offered free calling to the continental US. We've just expanded this to all 50 states by adding free calling to Alaska and Hawaii.

Blogs, Wikis, Docs: Which is right for your lesson? A Comparison Table

10/5/09

9/30/09

Google Docs to Blackboard, "Your days are numbered" -- from hackcollege.com by Kelly Sutton

9/29/09

Back to school with Google Docs -- from Google
As interns on the Google Docs team this past summer, we were excited to be able to work on making Google Docs that much more useful for students like us. We've now added a bunch of back to school features which should help our fellow students make the transition from summer to school that much easier — and we hope they'll be useful to you non-students as well!

9/28/09

Add page break and go to page in forms -- from Google
Have you ever wanted to create a form that changes which questions to show next based on an answer received earlier in the form? The two features we launched today make that easy. First, we've added one of the most requested features for forms: page breaks. Now it is easy to create a form with multiple pages by going to "Add item" and selecting "Page break.

Why Forms in Google Docs are Perfect for Creating Online Surveys -- from Digital Inspiration.com

From DSC:
You can also compare this with Survey Monkey

9/25/09

Read PowerPoint and PDF Files Online with Google Docs Viewer -- from Digital Inspiration

Google Google Google -- by John Battelle

A revealing, forward-looking examination of the outsize influence Google has had on the changing media Landscape.

There are companies that create waves and those that ride or are drowned by them. As only he can, bestselling author Ken Auletta takes readers for a ride on the Google wave, telling the story of how it formed and crashed into traditional media businesses-from newspapers to books, to television, to movies, to telephones, to advertising, to Microsoft. With unprecedented access to Google's founders and executives, as well as to those in media who are struggling to keep their heads above water, Auletta reveals how the industry is being disrupted and redefined.

Using Google as a stand-in for the digital revolution, Auletta takes readers inside Google's closed-door meetings and paints portraits of Google's notoriously private founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, as well as those who work with-and against-them. In his narrative, Auletta provides the fullest account ever told of Google's rise, shares the "secret sauce" of Google's success, and shows why the worlds of "new" and "old" media often communicate as if residents of different planets.

Google engineers start from an assumption that the old ways of doing things can be improved and made more efficient, an approach that has yielded remarkable results- Google will generate about $20 billion in advertising revenues this year, or more than the combined prime-time ad revenues of CBS, NBC, ABC, and FOX. And with its ownership of YouTube and its mobile phone and other initiatives, Google CEO Eric Schmidt tells Auletta his company is poised to become the world's first $100 billion media company. Yet there are many obstacles that threaten Google's future, and opposition from media companies and government regulators may be the least of these. Google faces internal threats, from its burgeoning size to losing focus to hubris. In coming years, Google's faith in mathematical formulas and in slide rule logic will be tested, just as it has been on Wall Street.

Distilling the knowledge accrued from a career of covering the media, Auletta will offer insights into what we know, and don't know, about what the future holds for the imperiled industry.

9/22/09

Google Wave: You need to pay attention to this. -- from Jason Kolb
So here's the deal with Wave: If you deal in technology, and you get this one wrong, you'll miss the boat. And it's a big boat. If, on the other hand, you get this one right, you have the potential to do some incredible innovation. In a nutshell, this is the next revolutionary leap in Internet application architecture. Maybe the first truly revolutionary leap since HTTP itself.

XMPP is so versatile that if it becomes widely adopted it will be to the Internet what HTTP was:  a platform for new types of applications. And where HTTP as a platform is a server-centric model, XMPP is capable of peer-to-peer communication. Remember what happened when everyone got HTTP clients (they're called browsers :) ?  The Internet exploded.  Well, if everyone gets a full-fledged XMPP client I think you can expect roughly the same thing to happen. One of the most fascinating features of XMPP is the way things are addressed.  EVERYTHING is addressable over the network. You can talk directly to ANYTHING, and ANYONE.  I can't stress how big of a shift that would be from the current model.  It's HUGE.

XMPP removes these intermediaries from the network.  Social networks and proprietary transports no longer have an exclusive license to deliver content, the clients talk directly to one another.

The Google Jockey -- from Free Technology for Teachers
As I Tweeted last week, every time I read The World Is Open: How Web Technology Is Revolutionizing Education I get an idea that I can apply to my classroom instruction. Today, while reading The World Is Open I came across the idea for having a "Google Jockey" in my classroom. The idea is that you have one student in the room who is responsible for looking up terms or phrases that come up during the course of classroom discussion. Like everyone else, I've had students Googling terms informally as they came up in the course of the class, but I had not thought of formally assigning one student to be the "head Googler" for the day. All of my students will have netbooks starting next month and the "Google Jockey" is a term that I plan to add to my students' vernacular. Combining the use of a back channel along with a Google Jockey could become a good avenue for drilling deeper into the content of the day's lesson.

From DSC:
Nice way of blending the online and face-to-face worlds!

9/21/09

Webinar Video - Teaching Search in the Classroom -- from freetech4teachers.com
Earlier this month Google hosted a webinar on teaching web search techniques. If you weren't able to participate in the webinar, you can now watch the whole webinar in this video of the event. The lesson plans and resources mentioned in the webinar can be found here. The video is embedded...

Using Google Calendar -- from Jane Hart
Google Calendar is the most popular online calendar, well, according to our Top 100 Tools for Learning anyway, but are you using all its functionality to best effect. One of the pages of the Social Media In Learning Tookkit deals with collaborative calendaring with Google Calandar. And this article today from Mashable explains How to stay organised with Google Calendar, is another useful resource.

Integrate your Google Apps -- from Social Media in Learning by Jane Hart

1. Get Your Calendar in Gmail
2. Put Your Gmail Messages on Your Calendar
3. Get Google Docs in Your Calendar and Gmail
4. Get Google Profile Feeds in Google Reader
5. Get Your Google Voice Text Messages via Gmail
6. Get All Your Google Apps on iGoogle
7. Integration Add-ons and Your Browser Sidebar

9/15/09

Google Tries to Reinvent the News With ‘Fast Flip’ -- from WebMonkey.com by Scott Gilbertson

9/11/09

Google Apps student users quadruple over 2008-2009 -- from Bryan Alexander
The number of students using Google Apps for Education quadrupled over the past year, according to Google. The worldwide number of students is reportedly over 5 million.

9/10/09

Google Sites, now in Hebrew and Arabic

New in Labs: Play Google Voice messages in Gmail & Play voicemails right from Gmail

Google News: A Payment System and A New Search Bar -- from John Battelle's Searchblog

From Neiman:
Google is developing a micropayment platform that will be “available to both Google and non-Google properties within the next year,” according to a document the company submitted to the Newspaper Association of America. The system, an extension of Google Checkout, would be a new and unexpected option for the news industry as it considers how to charge for content online.

9/9/09

Google Quadruples Students Using Apps for Education -- from The Journal by David Nagel
Google reported this week that the number of students using its Google Apps for Education Edition productivity and collaboration tools on campus has just about quadrupled over this time last year.

9/3/09

Touring Mars with Google Earth -- from Open Culture
Google Earth has somewhat outgrown its name. These days, Google’s satellite program (download it here) gives you more than a unique view of our planet Earth. It also offers a nice tour of Mars (and the Moon). The Mars tour is guided by a familiar voice — the voice of Ira Flatow, who hosts the well known NPR program, Talk Of The Nation: Science Friday. The video below will show you how to access the tour in a quick two minutes. In the meantime, you should also note that Google Earth hosts other educational content. In the past, we’ve mentioned how the program will let you tour the Prado Art collection in Spain, and also see Ancient Rome in 3D. But that’s not where the educational content ends. For more, please visit this summary page assembled by Google.

9/2/09

Google Voice for Newbies: Forwarding phone numbers -- from Google Voice Blog by Brian Hutchins

8/27/09

8/25/09

Google Code University -- from Google
This website provides tutorials and sample course content so CS students and educators can learn more about current computing technologies and paradigms. In particular, this content is Creative Commons licensed which makes it easy for CS educators to use in their own classes.

The Courses section contains tutorials, lecture slides, and problem sets for a variety of topic areas:

• AJAX Programming
• Algorithms
• Distributed Systems
• Web Security
• Languages

8/14/09

20,000+ Historical Maps - Many on Google Maps/Earth -- from Free Technology for Teachers

The David Rumsey Map Collection is a collection of more than 20,000 historical maps documenting places throughout the world. The maps can be searched by area, by time period, or by cartographer. You can also browse the collection using the LUNA Browser which operates within Firefox, IE, and Safari. For the Second Life users out there, the David Rumsey Map Collection can be viewed in Second Life. The David Rumsey Map Collection also offers Google Maps and Google Earth layers displaying selected maps.

8/11/09

8/4/09

I received my Google Voice Invite and You Should Too! -- from the Innovative Educator
Google Voice gives you one phone number that is tied to you. Not a particular phone or location. Additionally, you can chose to have that phone number ring any phone you’d like. As a result, you can pick just one phone to take with you and all your phones will ring into it. Users never again need to carry multiple phones or swap phones. While that alone is a reason to use Google Voice, there are many other reasons.

The biggest impetus for my getting Google Voice was that I learned that it converts all your voicemails to text and sends your phone a message with the converted voicemail to text. How fabulous is that?!?!!! Never again do you need to transcribe a message, or sort through 4 voicemails to get to the one you were trying to listen to. But wait, there’s more! Google voice allows you to let a call go to voicemail and allows you to ListenInTM on your voicemail messages while they are being left. If you decide to take the call, you can connect to the call by pressing “*.” Google Voice also provides conference calling.

7/30/09

Get Going with Google Apps in Your School -- from The Innovative Educator

7/29/09

Google Earth in education

7/27/09

Making presentations better with tables and auto-play --from The Google Apps Blog

7/17/09

Templates bring Docs to life -- from Google Docs blog
What do wedding planners, gas mileage calculators and photo albums have in common? They're all examples of templates available in the Google Docs Template Gallery that Sarah Beth Eisinger (Docs Templates engineer), Grant Dasher (intern), and I built and (happily!) released today.

7/15/09

Using Google's apps for online learning -- Janet Clarey

From Janet Clarey's presentation today:
25 Tools: A Toolbox for Learning Professionals 2009

7/8/09

Google takes on Windows with Chrome OS -- from CNN.com by John Sutter

• Google says it will release a computer operating system in fall or early 2010
  
• Google's Chrome OS could change the way personal computers work
  
• The system is touted as faster and more Web-friendly than Windows
  
• It supports cloud computing and will be available as open-source technology

With the Chrome OS, Google's software stack is revealed; Shrapnel everywhere -- from CNN.com by Larry Dignan
Google’s stack looks like this (Techmeme):

• The Chrome OS;
• The Chrome browser;
• Google Apps (an office suite sans the beta tag);
• Android for mobile;
• The ad monetization model (search based obviously and focused on ‘free’ services);
• The cloud.

Google Releasing Chrome Operating System -- from Lifehacker.com by Kevin Purdy

7/7/09

Gmail, Google Calendar, Docs, and Talk Leave Beta -- from Lifehacker: Top by Adam Pash

7/6/09

The New Communication And Collaboration Revolution Is Coming And Is Called Google Wave -- by John Blossom
"Email is a completely inadequate messaging infrastructure for communication, data sharing and information publishing to really satisfy today's typical consumer and enterprise needs. This is why Google Wave and its revolutionary approach hold so much promise and potential for the ways in which we are going to communicate and share information in the near future."

6/30/09

6/25/09

6/22/09

Google Translator Toolkit -- 47 languages

6/10/09

The Google Wave Highlight Reel -- from lifehacker by Gina Trapani
We haven't been invited to try out Google Wave (yet? pretty please Mister Google?), but based on the 80-minute demonstration video, we're jazzed about it. Don't have 80 minutes? These eight 30-60 second clips highlight the best parts of Google Wave.

 

6/3/09

I’ve Seen the Future and the Future is Us (Using Google) -- from The End in Mind by Jon Mott

6/1/09

Uh…Wow -- from e-Literate by Michael Feldstein
I want to write about what the implications of Google Wave are for educational technology, but I’m afraid that I’ll end up writing a book. And I’m still digesting. I usually try very hard to avoid hyperbole when talking about new technology (or any technology) but, really and truly, this could change everything. You must watch this video. It’s an hour and twenty minutes. Be prepared to be mesmerized for every minute of it.

What Intrigues Me About Google Wave -- from e-Literate by Michael Feldstein

• A/Synchronousness
• Open Permissions
• Playback
• Fluid Grouping
• Federation

Google Bets Big on HTML 5: News from Google I/O -- original link from Caleb Kuntz in the T&L Digital Studio; additional resources mentioned below

• HTML 5 demo apps shown in the keynote this morning.
• New developer features in Firefox 3.5
• To learn more about these HTML 5 features, check out these tutorials from the Opera, Mozilla, Palm, and Google teams (plus a few others):
• Canvas: HTML 5 Canvas: The Basics
  Painting with HTML 5 Canvas
• Video: A Call for Video on the Web
  HTML 5 Video Examples
• Geolocation: Track User Geolocation with Javascript
• Web cache and database: Palm WebOS HTML 5 DataBase Storage
  HTML 5 Features in Latest iPhone Applications
  Gmail for Mobile: Using AppCache to Launch Offline
• Web workers: Using DOM Workers

5/28/09

From Google IO Developer Conference | May 27- 28 | Moscone Center, San Francisco

Could Google Wave Redefine Email and Web Communication? -- from Mashable! by Ben Parr
Google promised to deliver something spectacular on the second day of the Google I/O conference, and they did not disappoint. Google has just announced Google Wave, a new in-browser communication and collaboration tool that is already being hailed by some as the next evolution of email. Yes, Google Wave is potentially that disruptive.

Here's how it works: In Google Wave you create a wave and add people to it. Everyone on your wave can use richly formatted text, photos, gadgets, and even feeds from other sources on the web. They can insert a reply or edit the wave directly. It's concurrent rich-text editing, where you see on your screen nearly instantly what your fellow collaborators are typing in your wave. That means Google Wave is just as well suited for quick messages as for persistent content — it allows for both collaboration and communication. You can also use "playback" to rewind the wave and see how it evolved.

From DSC:
Can't you just hear the engines roaring on the racetrack?! The pace is pushing 200 miles per hour now.

Google: Web and browsers will lead app development -- from CNN.com

Google shows Native Client built into HTML 5 -- from CNET by Stephen Shankland
SAN FRANCISCO--Google wants its Native Client technology to be a little more native.Google Native Client, still highly experimental, lets browsers run program modules natively on an x86 processor for higher performance than with Web programming technologies such as JavaScript or Flash that involve more software layers to process and execute the code. But to use it, there's a significant barrier: people must install a browser plug-in.

5/26/09

Take a 3D Virtual Tour of Disneyland via Google Earth -- from Digital Inspiration

5/20/09

U-M first to sign new digitization agreement with Google -- from the University of Michigan
ANN ARBOR, Mich.—The University of Michigan today announced that it has expanded its historic agreement with Google Inc. to create digital copies of millions of U-M library books and journals.

Google Reader Tells You Which Friends Are Worth Following -- from Mashable! by Ben Parr

Google Reader has been adding more and more social features recently, like the commenting on shared items options they added back in March. Today, they announced some updates that continue this push with several new social features.

 

Google Translate Now Included in Gmail -- from Mashable! by Jennifer Van Grove

 

5/18/09

Mobile Libraries Group on Google Groups
This is a group for the discussion of ideas, implementations, questions, and discussion about mobile library services.

5/15/09

Google Blog Search Gets Faster, More Accurate -- from Mashable! by Stan Schroeder

One of the many tools in Google’s toolbox is Google Blog Search, a service that isn’t hyped very much, but still powerful enough to steal the wind from (once almighty) Technorati’s sails. However, the results it delivers weren’t always that great; often, you’d get old results; sometimes, you’d get irrelevant ones.

The Great GoogleLapse (5-14-09) -- from Arbor Networks by Craig Labovitz

Web sites go down. Circuits fail. Network engineers goof router configs. And few of these outages ever make the nightly news…

But if you happen to be Google and your content constitutes up to 5% of all Internet traffic, people notice.  Network engineers around the world frantically email traceroutes to mailing lists. IRC channels fill with speculation (”definitely was a DDoS attack”, “no, a worm”, “it was ISP xxx’s  fault!”). And end users Twitter (a lot). So what does it look like when 5% of the Internet disappears on an otherwise uneventful Thursday morning? The below graph shows average traffic across 10 tier1/2 ISPs in North America from Google’s network (ASN 15169). Outage began roughly at 10:15am and lasted through 12:15pm EDT.

Looking at the data, most large transit providers appear to have been impacted (e.g., Level3, AT&T, etc.). Other providers (e.g. large consumer DSL / Cable) showed no drop in traffic from/to Google.

5/14/09

Some links re: Google:

• Google Workshops for Educators
  
• Google Teachers Academy
  
  

5/11/09

Google Earth -- from Educational Origami
...is a great entry level GIS tool (GIS geographical Information system)The basic download (which is available from http://earth.google.com) will allow the user:

• to navigate the globe
• switch easily between map and satelite views
• manipulate layers which overlay infrastructure, roads, etc or areas of social significence
• and more (See the tutorial)

But there is far more tham this available. You can develop your own resources in KML format and share these with colleagues. One of these sharing resources is a mashup between the CIA factbook and google earth maps. This is a good resource and one that will bring statistics and facts to life. http://www.kmlfactbook.org/

The statistics available are in the following categories:

• People
• Economics
• Transport
• Military
• Geography
• Government
• Communication

5/4/09

Google Founder’s Inspirational Commencement Speech (Video) -- from Mashable!
Google co-founder Larry Page delivered the Spring 2009 commencement address at the University of Michigan yesterday, the same university at which he earned his Bachelor of Science degree in computer engineering. Page used the opportunity to humbly tell the story of his success, along with that of Google itself. The speech, which we discovered via Pulse2, includes Page’s musings on Google’s birth...

4/23/09

Along these same lines, also see loopt:

My thanks to Mr. Ken Neville with Walt Disney Imagineering for these links

4/20/09

Google Similar Images -- Refine your image search with visual similarity
Similar Images allows you to search for images using pictures rather than words.

Google News Timeline
... is a web application that organizes search results chronologically. It allows users to view news and other data sources on a browsable, graphical timeline. Available data sources include recent and historical news, scanned newspapers and magazines, blog posts, sports scores, and information about various types of media, like music albums and movies.

4/14/09

Dive Into The Five Great Lakes With Google Earth -- from TechCrunch.com by Robin Wauters

If you’ve been using the recently released Google Earth 5.0 to check out what the oceans look like from beneath the water surface (tip: use the flight simulator to fly underwater), you’ll be happy to know that the company has extended that capability to the “Third Coast” of the U.S., meaning the five Great Lakes of North America (Superior, Michigan, Huron, Erie, and Ontario) that form the largest group of freshwater lakes on the planet (roughly 22% of it according to Wikipedia).

4/10/09

Add Inline Images in Gmail without Attachments -- from Digital Inspiration by Amit Agarwal

Insert Images into Your Gmail Messages -- from Digital Inspiration by Adam Ostrow

4/6/09

Embedding Google Presentation in Your Blog -- from Leigh Zeitz

4/3/09

Gmail Gets Smarter Search -- from Mashable! by Adam Ostrow
One of the main reasons to use Gmail over competitive webmail products or a client like Outlook is because of its lightning fast search capabilities. Today, those capabilities are getting a bit of an upgrade, in the form of auto-complete when searching, plus easier options for finding emails with specific attributes like file attachments.

Written by Janet Clarey, senior researcher, analyst, and writer at Brandon Hall Research, “Using Google for Online Learning: 25 Easy-to-Use Applications,” shows that when it comes to online learning, Google provides more than just its popular search engine.

This report provides profiles of 25 Google applications. Each is a Web-based product that runs in a Web browser, without requiring users to buy or install software. Google apps include tools for communications, office (like word processing, spreadsheets, and calendars), Web sites, social networks, blogs, customizable interfaces, and many others.

3/31/09

Fifteen Interesting Ways* to use Google Docs in the Classroom (*and Tips) -- from Tom Barrett

3/27/09

CloudSherpas.com
They work with cloud computing for the enterprise; they are also big-time into Google

3/26/09

Create Flowcharts & Diagrams in Google Docs -- from Digital Inspiration by Amit Agarwal

More Security Loopholes Found In Google Docs -- from TechCrunch.com, by Robin Wauters

3/20/09

Google Apps -- below quotes from Google

• For personal use:
  Keep in touch and share with friends and family. Free, intuitive tools you can access anywhere with a single account.
• For businesses and schools:
  Put Google's web-based communication, collaboration and security apps to work for your company or school.