25 Apr 2018
The Official Google Blog
Help fight the opioid epidemic this National Prescription Drug Take Back Day
We're deeply concerned by the opioid crisis that has impacted families in every corner of the United States. We started by thinking about how to bring Google's technical expertise to help families combat the epidemic.
Research by the federal government has shown that prescription drug abuse is a large driver of opioid addiction, and that the majority of abused prescription drugs are obtained from family or friends, often from a home medicine cabinet. The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) has found that one way that Americans can help prevent drug abuse and addiction is to properly dispose of unneeded or expired prescription drugs. Yet many people aren't aware of, or can't easily find, prescription drug disposal programs in their communities.
Using Google Maps API, our team worked with the DEA to create a locator tool for the National Prescription Drug Take Back Day this Saturday, April 28. The locator tool can help anyone find a place near them to safely dispose of leftover prescription medications. Click on the image below to access the locator, and enter an address or zip code to find nearby Take Back Day events this Saturday and help fight the opioid epidemic.
Longer term, we're working with the DEA and state governments like Iowa, Arizona, Massachusetts, and Michigan to gather data on year-round take back options for future Google Maps integration.
In addition to making it easier to find take back locations, we're also proud to support non-profit organizations on the frontlines of this crisis. We've worked with the Partnership for Drug-Free Kids since 2015 to help parents searching online for support connect to the Partnership's Parent Helpline. This service provides free counseling and advice to parents who need help addressing the many challenges of a child's substance use. Today, we're announcing $750,000 in matching gifts and other grants from Google.org to help expand the Parent Helpline and get even more families the support and help they need.
We're also committed to ensuring that the public understands the danger of opioid abuse and the resources available for those who need help, by making useful information about opioid addiction and prescription drugs available in Google Search.
There are no easy answers to a challenge as large as the opioid crisis, but we're committed to doing our part to ensure that people in every corner of the country have access to the resources they need to address this urgent public health emergency.
25 Apr 2018 4:00am GMT
24 Apr 2018
Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing
SearchCap: Google earnings, fake online reviews & paid search
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. The post SearchCap: Google earnings, fake online reviews & paid search appeared first on Search Engine Land.
Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.
24 Apr 2018 8:00pm GMT
Reports: Fake reviews are a growing problem on Amazon, Google
Facebook is reportedly the source of some of the fake review solicitations. The post Reports: Fake reviews are a growing problem on Amazon, Google appeared first on Search Engine Land.
Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.
24 Apr 2018 5:11pm GMT
The Official Google Blog
Two higher ed collaborations expand access to Google Cloud Platform
From Northeastern University's work to map the spread of the Zika virus, to MIT's massive computing for theoretical mathematics, higher education institutions are applying cloud technologies to help solve the global challenges we face.
Northeastern and MIT's work are just two examples of higher education institutions using Google Cloud Platform (GCP) to uncover important insights from massive, diverse data sets. Today, we're announcing how we're collaborating with two higher education organizations, Unizin and Internet2, so that their members can benefit from GCP.
Improving student outcomes through the Unizin Data Platform
Colleges and universities are constantly seeking ways to better understand and help their students. This week Unizin, a consortium of 25 leading universities working together to improve education with technology, announced that its Unizin Data Platform (UDP) will be built on Google Cloud Platform as part of a new alliance with Google Cloud.
The Unizin Data Platform allows institutions to anonymize, aggregate, store, share, and analyze teaching and learning data. Member universities use this data to do things like identify students who may be at risk of failing a class or improve personalized learning approaches. Understanding data from the past gives educators more insights and tools to help improve student outcomes.
Rob Lowden, Unizin Executive Director, shared that "Building the Unizin Data Platform on the Google Cloud Platform provides our members with scalable infrastructure, powerful data analytics and the ability to leverage machine learning solutions to advance Unizin's work to improve learning research and outcomes in a highly secure environment. Google Cloud is an ideal provider for Unizin to advance the higher education digital learning ecosystem."
GCP now available to the Internet2 community
Founded in 1996, the nonprofit consortium Internet2 provides a collaborative environment for U.S. research and education organizations to solve shared technology challenges. Internet2 has announced that member institutions can now use Google Cloud Platform, available through distributor Carahsoft, to develop solutions in support of their educational, research and community service missions. The pre-Validation service is available now and the fully validated service will launch later this year. Institutions can learn more and express interest on Internet2's website.
We hope these new collaborations will help more institutions take advantage of Google Cloud Platform to drive impact in research and collaboration. To learn more visit our website or express interest.
24 Apr 2018 5:00pm GMT
Learning “what architecture really means” with help from Pixelbook
Editor's Note:This post comes from Cynthia Fernandes, Principal at Hall School in Bridgeport, Connecticut.
For the past three years, sixth graders at my school have learned about architecture and design through an extracurricular program started by Thom Mayne, founder of the architecture firm Morphosis and winner of the Pritzker Prize. It's been amazing to see 10- and 11-year-olds talking about angles, form, and design-and do it with confidence. Though they're only in elementary school, the students do work at the level of middle- or high-schoolers. This year, they've used Google Pixelbook to create an accurate 3D model of their classroom, and then build on the model with abstract installations of their own design. We recently took a few minutes to hear from the students about their experience.
Q: What's your favorite part about this class? What have you learned?
Miguel: I like creating things and showing them to other people. The part I love the most is talking about my creations-what do they mean? What do they say?
Milayna: My favorite part is when we do hands-on stuff, like models or drawings. I like this because it's fun and I'm always proud of my work. I'm crafty.
Q: What's a cool vocabulary word you learned about in this class? What does it mean?
Zamair: My favorite vocabulary word is "disarrange." That means to put stuff in places so it's not arranged.
Milayna: A cool vocabulary word is "suspended," because it sounds cool, and it means hanging from the ceiling.
Shayla: My favorite word is "surround," because you can make a cool model, than surround it with other, smaller or bigger, cool models.
Yalidsa: "Hierarchy." It means the order of things, like different shapes and shades, what's thick and thin, what's heavy and light.
Q: Have you learned anything in this class that you use in other classes?
Milayna: I learned how to look at buildings differently, and that helps me because in social studies we are studying old buildings, so it fits in perfectly.
Zamair: I use architecture in math, with area and volume.
Q: What was your proudest moment in this class?
Kania: My proudest moment was when I did a great job on my presentation on my architecture project.
Miguel: My proudest moment was when a lot of people came in to see our projects, and we had to discuss them. I was the first to go up and speak, and everybody liked what I was saying, and that made me feel proud.
Q: If you were an architect, what would you want to make?
Yalidsa: My own clothing or toy shop.
Kania: I'd want to design my own house for me and my family.
Ernesto: A school or office building.
Joel: I'd want to make something that will make people's life easier.
Hasan: I'd build an airplane that's beautiful. And that can go up in the air by itself.
Miguel: I'd want to make an office that would make everybody stop and think, "How did that person get that idea to make this?" It would probably be tall and have, like, a yellow shine to it when the sunset comes. The outside would most likely have a pattern on each wall, white and glowing.
Clinton: A big house with a pool and a football field and a basketball court.
Q: What's it like to work with classmates on projects?
Clinton: It's cool because I work with my friends, and it's fun working with your friends.
Miguel: Working with classmates is cool because, when you have no idea of what to do, other people can help you out and give you more ideas. Working together is good because you can make something that was way better than you thought it would be.
Erik: It feels like you can do better work, since you're working together and helping each other.
Q: What do you tell your friends about this program?
Joel: I tell my friends how cool this program is, and how we're so lucky to be doing this.
Hasan: I tell them that it is a great program, and it's what I might do when I grow up.
-
ThomMayne_1.png
Joel presents his work during a critique with Thom Mayne.
-
ThomMayne_2.png
Joel and Milayna collaborate on a project.
-
ThomMayne_3.jpg
Students exploring what's possible with AutoCAD on Pixelbook.
24 Apr 2018 5:00pm GMT
Search Engine Land: News & Info About SEO, PPC, SEM, Search Engines & Search Marketing
Google posts $31.1B in total revenue, beats top- and bottom-line expectations
The company reported nearly $27 billion in ad revenues. The post Google posts $31.1B in total revenue, beats top- and bottom-line expectations appeared first on Search Engine Land.
Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.
24 Apr 2018 3:36pm GMT
22 Apr 2018
Dexigner
VISION by Pininfarina
Pininfarina premiered VISION, an innovative kitchen designed for Snaidero, at the 2018 Milan Furniture Fair.
22 Apr 2018 11:43pm GMT
Young Guns 16: Call for Entries
Young Guns 16, the industry's only global, cross-disciplinary, portfolio-based awards competition that identifies and celebrates today's vanguard of young creatives age 30 and under, is now open for submissions.
22 Apr 2018 11:08pm GMT
Tom Dixon's New London HQ Now Open
Tom Dixon Studio has opened its new HQ, 'The Coal Office,' in Kings Cross. Located on Granary Square, the brand's new hub will contribute to an ever-expanding network of creatives and technologists from the likes of Central St. Martins and LVMH to Google and Spiritland.
22 Apr 2018 10:38pm GMT
08 Mar 2018
Matt Cutts: Gadgets, Google, and SEO
Some terrible personal news
Cindy Cutts, my wife and best friend, passed away earlier this week. While I was traveling for work recently, Cindy went to visit her family in Omaha, Nebraska. On Sunday, while enjoying time with family, Cindy started having trouble breathing. Her family quickly called 911 and paramedics took Cindy to the hospital, but Cindy lost […]
08 Mar 2018 12:17am GMT
22 Jan 2018
Matt Cutts: Gadgets, Google, and SEO
Talking to Mr. Money Mustache about the US Digital Service
Last week, I passed my one year anniversary as head of the US Digital Service (USDS). So when Mr. Money Mustache asked for an interview, I was delighted to talk about some of the work that the USDS does. If you aren't familiar with Mr. Money Mustache, he writes about a philosophy of badassity in […]
22 Jan 2018 6:58pm GMT
01 Apr 2017
Google Operating System
Google April Fools' Day 2017
April Fools' Day should probably be called Google Fools' Day, since there are so many Google hoaxes.
Google Japan developed a "bubble wrap" version of the Japanese keyboard. "The Google Japanese input bubble wrap version is a keyboard that realizes 'I want to press in my mind, I want to keep pressing'," according to Google Translate.
Another product for your smart home? Meet Google Gnome, "a voice-activated, hands-free tool designed to make backyard living effortless. Need to know what animal is squeaking in your bushes? Stay still and ask Gnome what sound an opossum makes. Running low on birdseed? That's where Gnome comes in. You can even use Gnome's proprietary high-intensity lasers to trim your hedges into whatever shape your heart desires."
The Chrome OS team brings the most popular mobile accessories to the Chromebook, which already blurs the line between mobile and desktop. Chromebook Groupie Stick, Chromebook Cardboard, Chromebook Workout Armband will soon be available in the Google Store. "To take advantage of beautiful, high-resolution displays, as well as great photo editing apps, we've carefully engineered the first Chromebook-sized selfie stick. Never again will you miss the perfect groupie."
Haptic Helpers make VR even more immersive. "We're taking VR to the next level with Haptic Helpers. Using a modest set of everyday tools, these VR virtuosos can simulate more than 10,000 unique experiences, all from the comfort of your own home. Smell the roses. Listen to the ocean. Feel a fluffy dog!"
You can now play the classic arcade game MS. PAC-MAN in Google Maps. "Avoid Blinky, Pinky, Inky, and Sue as you swerve the streets of real places around the world. But eat the pac-dots fast, because this game will only be around for a little while." Just go to the Google Maps site or open the Google Maps app for Android or iOS and click or tap MS. PAC-MAN at the bottom.
Google Cloud Platform expands to Mars. "By opening a dedicated extraterrestrial cloud region, we're bringing the power of Google's compute, network, and storage to the rest of the solar system, unlocking a plethora of possibilities for astronomy research, exploration of Martian natural resources and interplanetary life sciences. This region will also serve as an important node in an extensive network throughout the solar system. Our first interplanetary data center - affectionately nicknamed 'Ziggy Stardust' - will open in 2018," mentions Google.
Google Netherlands came up with Google Wind, a machine learning technology that controls the weather. "The Netherlands has many windmills, some no longer in use, we can connect to Google Cloud Platform. So we use the existing Dutch infrastructure, machine learning, weather patterns to control the network of windmills when rain is approaching. The first test results are very promising: we seem to be able to provide sun and clear skies for everyone in the Netherlands," mentions Google Netherlands blog.
Google's search app for iOS is now optimized for cats and dogs. "On the Google app for iOS, you can now use 3D Touch on the app icon or head to settings and select I'm Feeling Woof or I'm Feeling Meow to let your dogs and cats get info on topics they care about-whether that means squeaky toys or a bowl of milk!"
Google also launched Google Play for Pets, a new category of Android games designed for cats, dogs and other pets.
Google Translate's Word Lens feature supports a new language: Heptapod B, the alien language from the movie "Arrival". "The challenge with understanding Heptapod B is its nonlinear orthography. Fortunately, Google's neural machine translation system employs an encoder/decoder system that internally represents sentences as high-dimensional vectors. These vectors map well to the non-linear orthography of the Heptapod language and they are really the enabling technical factor in translating Heptapod B."
01 Apr 2017 7:25am GMT
19 Feb 2017
Google Operating System
Gmail Blocks JavaScript Attachments
If you try to send a JavaScript attachment using Gmail or if you want to download a .js attachment, you'll get a new anti-virus warning: "Blocked for security reasons", "1 attachment contains a virus or blocked file. Downloading this attachment is disabled".
.JS has been added to the long list of file types that are blocked by Gmail for security reasons. The full list: .ADE, .ADP, .BAT, .CHM, .CMD, .COM, .CPL, .EXE, .HTA, .INS, .ISP, .JAR, .JS (NEW), .JSE, .LIB, .LNK, .MDE, .MSC, .MSI, .MSP, .MST, .NSH .PIF, .SCR, .SCT, .SHB, .SYS, .VB, .VBE, .VBS, .VXD, .WSC, .WSF, .WSH. "To prevent against potential viruses, Gmail doesn't allow you to attach certain types of files, including: certain file types (listed above), including their compressed form (like .gz or .bz2 files) or when found within archives (like .zip or .tgz files), documents with malicious macros, archives whose listed file content is password protected, archives whose content includes a password protected archive."
The GSuite Blog informs that "for inbound mail, senders will get a bounce message explaining why the email was blocked. If you still need to send .js files for legitimate reasons, you can use Google Drive, Google Cloud Storage, or other storage solutions to share or send your files."
You can still send JavaScript files using Gmail if you change the extension. What about downloading old .js attachments? Try the workarounds from this post.
19 Feb 2017 10:39am GMT
25 Jan 2017
Google Operating System
Google Image Search Shows Colorful Suggestions
Google Image Search has a different way to display suggestions: it now shows a long list of colorful boxes with related searches. You can click one or more boxes to dynamically refine search results.
For example, when searching for [sportswear], Google shows suggestions like: [women basketball], [tennis], [badminton], [golf], [volleyball], [nike woman], [alexander wang], [adidas], [fashion], [performance], [vintage], [trendy], [urban], [school], [gym], [90's], [70's], [vogue], [luxe], [avant garde], [korean], [italian], [french] and more. It's interesting to notice that each category of suggestions has a different color.
Here's the old interface, which had fewer suggestions and displayed thumbnails next to suggestions:
25 Jan 2017 9:39pm GMT
19 Jan 2017
Matt Cutts: Gadgets, Google, and SEO
Staying with the US Digital Service
A few months ago, I took a leave of absence from Google to do a stint with the US Digital Service. A lot of people know about the US Digital Service because they helped rescue the healthcare.gov website. But you might not realize that the US Digital Service has helped veterans get their health benefits, […]
19 Jan 2017 3:47am GMT
11 Nov 2011
Search Engine Watch - Latest
Google’s Timeline Search Option is History
As Google pushes fresh search results, a helpful Google search tool for historical searches quietly vanished earlier this month. Google has confirmed that Google's Timeline search option, which debuted in 2007, has been discontinued. By cl...
11 Nov 2011 9:35pm GMT
Google Releases Think Insights Trend & Research Hub for Marketers
Google has graduated Think Insights from beta. This tool now compiles real-time data from Google search and other platforms, combining those facts with additional studies, infographics, and more. Users can find the site at ThinkwithGoogle.com, a...
11 Nov 2011 8:45pm GMT
Google Snaps Up Katango, Social Contact Sorter Meant for Facebook
Google has just acquired startup Katango, makers of a Facebook friends list generating iPhone app released this July. Shortly after its debut, however, Katango's autogenerator faced serious competition from Facebook itself, as it rolled out ...
11 Nov 2011 7:35pm GMT
06 Nov 2011
Planet Arch Linux
Tyrs a Microblogging Client based on Ncurses
Tyrs is a microblogging client, supporting Twitter and Status.net (identi.ca), it's based on console using the NCurses module from Python. The release of the 0.5.0 version is a good excuse to introduce Tyrs. Tyrs aims to get a good interaction with a fairly intuitive interface that can provide support ncurses. Tyrs tries also not to [...]
06 Nov 2011 9:43pm GMT
About.com Architecture
Born on November 6: Jean Louis Charles Garnier
French architect Jean Louis Charles Garnier was born on November 6, 1825. Inspired by Roman pageantry, Garnier wanted ...
06 Nov 2011 1:00am GMT
05 Nov 2011
Planet Arch Linux
Pulling strings
After one year of managing a network of 10 servers with Cfengine I'm currently building two clusters of 50 servers with Puppet (which I'm using for the first time), and have various notes to share. With my experience I had a feeling Cfengine just isn't right for this project, and didn't consider it seriously. These servers are all running Debian GNU/Linux and Puppet felt natural because of the good Debian integration, and the number of users whom also produced a lot of resources. Chef was out of the picture soon because of the scary architecture; CouchDB, Solr and RabbitMQ... coming from Cfengine this seemed like a bad joke. You probably need to hire a Ruby developer when it breaks. Puppet is somewhat better in this regard.
Puppet master needs Ruby, and has a built-in file server using WEBrick. My first disappointment with Puppet was WEBrick. Though PuppetLabs claim you can scale it up to 20 servers, that proved way off, the built-in server has problems serving as little as 5 agents/servers, and you get to see many dropped connections and failed catalog transfers. I was forced to switch to Mongrel and Nginx as frontend very early in the project, on both clusters. This method works much better (even though Apache+Passenger is the recommended method now from PuppetLabs), and it's not a huge complication compared to WEBrick (and Cfengine which doesn't make you jump through any hoops). Part of the reason for this failure is my pull interval, which is 5 minutes with a random sleep time of up to 3 minutes to avoid harmonics (which is still a high occurrence with these intervals and WEBrick fails miserably). In production a customer can not wait on 30/45 minute pull intervals to get his IP address whitelisted for a service, or some other mundane task, it must happen within 10 minutes... but I'll come to these kind of unrealistic ideas a little later.
Unlike the Cfengine article I have no bootstrapping notes, and no code/modules to share. By default the fresh started puppet agent will look for a host called "puppet" and pull in what ever you defined to bootstrap servers in your manifests. As for modules, I wrote a ton of code and though I'd like to share it, my employer owns it. But unlike Cfengine v3 there's a lot of resources out there for Puppet which can teach you everything you need to know, so I don't feel obligated to even ask.
Interesting enough, published modules would not help you get your job done. You will have to write your own, and your team members will have to learn how to use your modules, which also means writing a lot of documentation. Maybe my biggest disappointment is getting disillusioned by most Puppet advocates and DevOps prophets. I found articles and modules most of them write, and experiences they share have nothing to do with the real world. It's like they host servers in a magical land where everything is done in one way and all servers are identical. Hosting big websites and their apps is a much, much different affair.
Every customer does things differently, and I had to write custom modules for each of them. Just between these two clusters a module managing Apache is different, and you can abstract your code a lot but you reach a point where you simply can't push it any more. Or if you can, you create a mess that is unusable by your team members, and I'm trying to make their jobs better not make them miserable. One customer uses an Isilon NAS, the other has a content distribution network, one uses Nginx as a frontend, other has chrooted web servers, one writes logs to a NFS, other to a Syslog cluster... Now imagine this on a scale with 2,000 customers and 3 times the servers and most of the published infrastructure design guidelines become laughable. Instead you find your self implementing custom solutions, and inventing your own rules, best that you can...
I'm ultimately here to tell you that the projects are in a better state then they would be with the usual cluster management policy. My best moment was an e-mail from a team member saying "I read the code, I now understand it [Puppet]. This is fucking awesome!". I knew at that moment I managed to build something good (or good enough), despite the shortcomings I found, and with nothing more than using PuppetLabs resources. Actually, that is not completely honest. Because I did buy and read the book Pro Puppet which contains an excellent chapter on using Git for collaboration on modules between sysadmins and developers, with proper implementation of development, testing and production (Puppet)environments.
05 Nov 2011 11:17pm GMT
Jshon
Creating json is now ten times easier.
05 Nov 2011 3:10am GMT
04 Nov 2011
About.com Architecture
Architecture Updates: Oct. 29-Nov. 4, 2011
Postmodernism, house plans, and New Orleans captured our attention this week. Updated material includes:
- New Orleans Now
- Before You Buy House Plans
- Robert Venturi, Postmodern Architect
- Denise Scott Brown, Venturi, Scott Brown & Associates
- The Vanna Venturi House
- ...
04 Nov 2011 10:30am GMT
The Dawn of Deco
Archaeologist Howard Carter thrilled the world when, on November 4, 1922, he discovered steps leading down to the ancient tomb of King Tutankhamen. Soon a fascination for Egypt found expression ...
04 Nov 2011 1:00am GMT
26 Aug 2011
Google Blogoscoped
The Emperor's Garden
The Emperor instructed the gardener to set up the new court's garden. "I want you to plant five trees growing the Crataan fruit," the Emperor said, "Because we asked people what fruit they like best, and most named the Crataan fruit!" The gardener replied, "Emperor, that is excellent thinking! But let me make some suggestions: First, how about we make one of the five trees bear the Muran fruit. Only one out of ten citizens loves it, but those peculiar citizens tend to love multiple times as much!" "Second," the gardener continued, "How about we make one of the five trees bear the Dratean fruit. No one loves it, but that's because no one knows it yet!" "Third," the gardener said, "How about we leave one spot in the garden empty. Who knows what new type of tree we'll discover that we can put there in the fut ...
26 Aug 2011 12:12pm GMT
15 Aug 2011
Google Blogoscoped
Color Sound Machine (and what else I've been doing lately)
For those of you who've been wondering whether I had turned to stone, fallen into a bottomless pit, or been climbing the Himalaya... no, none of that is true, even though you probably did notice I'm not actively blogging about Google here anymore*! Just now, a new iPad app I've been working on called Color Sound Machine went live, and this -- and all the other apps and games at Versus Pad** -- are actually what I am doing while not blogoscoping. *I've drafted unpublished posts explaining much more about past, present and future of Blogoscoped, and the history of Google news reporting, but ... oh, for now le ...
15 Aug 2011 4:00pm GMT
25 Feb 2011
Google Blogoscoped
Google drops reverse phone number lookup
One of the earliest specialist services provided by Google was reverse phone number lookup. If you used the "phonebook:" or "rphonebook:" operators together with a 10-digit US phone number, Google would show you the owner of that phone number, unless the number was unlisted. Google no longer provides that service. Not surprisingly, there was no press release marking the closure, but Google employee Daniel Russell has acknowledged the closure of the service in his blog. He hints at the possible pressures leading to the shuttering of the service: "As you can imagine, this was an endless source of hassles for people (who were surprised to see themselves searchable on Google) and for Google (who had to constantly de ...
25 Feb 2011 11:23am GMT