Google Maps added a new feature recently that allows to you view driving direction on street level easier. This feature is currently available in city has Google Street View only. This is pretty similar to what has been added to the latest version of Google Earth.
Googler Junyu Wang Kouliqin managed to transform this Google Lego calendar into the monster a dog pictured above. Or did the Lego transformed itself??
TRANSFORMER!!!
[photo by Googler Junyu Wang, used under a CC-license]
Google had several special logos in the last couple days to celebrate holidays that took place in various parts of the world.
Saint George’s Day (UK): Saint George is one of the most venerated saints in the Eastern Orthodox Church, Oriental Orthodox Churches, and the Eastern Catholic Churches. He is immortalized in the tale of George and the Dragon and is one of the Fourteen Holy Helpers. His memorial is celebrated on 23 April. [Wikipedia]
Girls’ Day (Germany): The Girls’Day opens up extensive future prospects to a generation of qualified young women. With the objective of establishing contacts and drawing attention of industries and the public to girls’ strengths. [Girls-Day.de]
ANZAC Day (Australia): Anzac Day is commemorated by Australia and New Zealand on 25 April every year to honour members of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps who fought at Gallipoli in Turkey during World War I. [Wikipedia]
Children’s Day (Turkey): Children’s Day was celebrated on April 23rd each year, “children from around the world come to Turkey. They’re hosted by families who have children of a similar age. […] Many children, often not even speaking the same langauge, create lifelong friendships.” [Wikipedia] The logo used is created by Aytuğ Fidan, who won the Doodle4Google (Turkey) competition held last month.
Last but not least, Google is holding another Doodle4Google competiton opened to children age 5 to 18 in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. The theme is the European Championship (and soccer). Winner of this competition will have his/her winning logo displayed on the homepage of Google Germany, Austria, and Switzerland on the day of European Championship Finals, as well as receiving an Apple MacBook.
[thanks to Pascal :)]
When Google announced offline Google Docs, users can only view and edit text documents, but the Google Docs blog announced that we can now view (but cannot edit) the spreadsheets and presentations offline as well.
Along with the offline update also comes with several new features like inserting videos and speaker notes to presentations, and edit CSS for documents. To insert a video, you will just need to click on the “Insert Video” button on the toolbar and select YouTube videos to be added to the presentation. Google probably has plans to include more video sites for this feature in the future, but for now you are stuck with YouTube.
To edit the document’s CSS just to to Edit -> CSS and start styling your document. Keep in mind that Google Docs automatically comments out some CSS like background images (at least for body), so don’t panic when your CSS isn’t working. (Turns out that they just don’t allow external images to be used in CSS.)
Silicon Alley Insider guesstimated that Google spends about $70 millions a year in U.S. offices for the free food program that Google offer to its employees. The free food program covers snacks, drinks, and two to three meals a day.
SAI’s calculation: (8000 Googlers at Googleplex + 1600 more in other U.S. offices) * ($30/day for each employee) * (Google opens 251 days a year) = ~ $72 million
SAI updated the post saying that it’s more like $20/day per employee, shrinking down the guesstimate total to ~$48 million - that’s still a huge chunk of money. Kaching!
[photo by Ian Kennedy (in the photo is Googler Don Loeb), used under a CC-license]
Google Transit recently became available to Chicago users and the Chicago team has been very active in promoting the service to the residents of the city, like passing out flyers and advertising on buses, as you can see.
According to the Google LatLong blog, “the [Chicago Transit Authority] serves an average of 1.6 million riders per weekday and nearly 500 million rides a year, so being able to provide this new service to our vast ridership and all of the 45 million tourists who visit this great city every year is a great stride in promoting the use and convenience of public transportation.”
[photo by Outsanity, used under a CC-license]
Google’s been celebrating (the April 22) Earth Day since 2001, and this year is no exception.
Responding to widespread environmental degradation, Gaylord Nelson, a United States Senator from Wisconsin, called for an environmental teach-in, or Earth Day, to be held on April 22, 1970. Over 20 million people participated that year, and Earth Day is now observed each year on April 22 by more than 500 million people and national governments in 175 countries. [Wikipedia]
YouTube has a special logo for this day as well.
[thanks to Bram]
Turns out that Albus Dumbledore has a part time job working as the Headmaster of the Noogler School of Hacks and Wizardry at Google.
[photo by Sudhakar Chandrasekhran, used under a CC-license]
It seems like Google have revived a feature that lasted only two weeks in early 2004 - WHOIS lookup. However, unlike last time querying Network Solution’s WHOIS database abusively, Google this time partnered with DomainTools to display limited information of a domain when users search for it. The feature currently display the domain’s creation and expiration date.
The feature was supposedly be released last month, according to Jay Westerdal, CEO of Name Intelligence (the company that owns DomainTools), in a March interview, but it seems like that Google has postponed it till now.
To use this feature, just search for “whois {domain.tld}” and replace “{domain.tld}” with the actual domain name. It should work with all TLDs, even those that are less popular, like .museum and .cat (there are some domains that do not show up on Google but show up on Domaintools though).
[thanks Tom :)]
Google announced their earnings for the first quarter of 2008. The reported revenues of $5.19 billion beat most analysts’ expectation. The stock jumped 20% during today’s trade to $539.41 - the “largest one-day gain” for the Google stock.
The Wall Street Journal reports that Yahoo! is “moving “closer to outsourcing its search advertising to Google”, after a successful test run of AdSense for Search on its site. I think that if Yahoo!’s really doing this, then the two companies will be interdependent on each other and eventually merge. It’s not a bad thing, but people are tired of monopolies.
Blogger Joelle McNichol caught her cat installing Google Desktop. She describes: “Anthony and Jax cat managed to install Google desktop by falling asleep on the laptop.”
It’s so easy that even a cat can do it!
[photo by Joelle McNichol, used under a CC-license]
Google Earth 4.3 was released two days ago on the 15th. The new version includes many updates and new features like Google Street View, new navigation controls, sunlight mode and a lot more. I guess I will let the pro from the GEarthBlog do the speaking.
The thing about Google Earth is that it doesn’t give me as much excitements now as it once did when it first launched in 2005.
In other news, Google announced SketchUp 3D Basecamp 2008 to gather SketchUp enthusiasts for “three days of SketchUp learning, sharing and fun” during June 11th to the 13th. Also, Earth Day 2008 is next Tuesday, on April 22nd.
