Hey—we've moved. Visit
The Keyword
for all the latest news and stories from Google
Official Blog
Insights from Googlers into our products, technology, and the Google culture
Get your transit schedules and directions with Google Maps for mobile
June 6, 2008
Posted by Ryan Pollock, Product Marketing Manager
What with everyone thinking about ways to save on gas and avoid driving, one obvious tactic is to take public transportation. With that (and the environment) in mind, we continue to work with public transportation agencies to get bus and train schedules, and integrate this information into Google Maps. We just launched transit directions in
Google Maps for mobile
so that you can get transit directions while you're out and about in more than 50 cities worldwide. Right now transit directions are available on the latest Google Maps for mobile release on BlackBerry and many Java-based phones. We'll be adding support for other phones shortly.
To see how it works,
read more
on the Google Mobile Blog, and watch this demo:
Explore
Walt Disney World
®
Resort in 3D
June 5, 2008
Posted by Jay Rasulo, Chairman, Walt Disney Parks and Resorts
Last May, Eric Schmidt and I met to talk about The Walt Disney Company’s focus on technology. We started to explore innovative ways we could work together to bring one of the world’s most magical destinations to Google Earth’s millions of users… and how our guests could be a mouse-click away from visiting the place where dreams come true.
The result is
Walt Disney World
®
Resort in 3D
, an interactive, virtual
Walt Disney World
completely recreated on Google Earth. This revolutionary project features 3D models of our four Orlando theme parks and more than 20 of Disney’s Resort hotels. Incredible in scope -- containing over 1,500 3D models --
Walt Disney World Resort
in 3D is the most detailed 3D rendering undertaken on Google Earth to date.
From the summit of
Space Mountain
® to the watery confines of the
Pirates of the Caribbean
®, we invite you to explore the
Walt Disney World Resort
in Google Earth. It’s the next best thing to being there.
Does your password pass the test?
June 4, 2008
Posted by HongHai Shen, Engineer
This post is the latest in an ongoing
series
about online safety. - Ed.
One of the things I work on is password security. And because I'm someone who pays close attention to passwords and how people use them, I sometimes hear interesting stories. For example, a couple of my colleagues are so careful about the security of their passwords that they generate a random eight-character string, memorize it, and then use it as their password for two to three months. After that time elapses, they start the process over again and generate a new random password.
Do we all need to be that careful about our passwords? Probably not. But passwords are one of the web's most important security tools. Whether it's for your Google account, your banking center, or your favorite store, choosing a good password and keeping it safe can go a long way toward protecting your information online.
So how do you choose a good password, and then keep it safe? A few of these tips can help:
Avoid common elements when choosing your password.
Specifically, you should avoid using words or phases from the dictionary, especially things that are easy to guess, like "password," "let me in," or the name of the site you're logging into. You should also avoid using keyboard patterns, such as "asdf1234" or "aqswdefr," or personal information, such as birthdays, addresses, or phone numbers.
Make your password as unique as possible.
Once you've settled on a good base for your password, you should go a step further and add in numbers and non-alphanumerical characters, mix in upper-case letters, or use similar-looking substitutions for parts of the password, such as "$" for "s," "1" for "l," and "0" for "o."
Create different passwords for different sites.
Doing so will help ensure that if one password is compromised, the others will remain secure. You may not be able to have a unique password for every place you visit on the web (for some of us, that would be a lot of passwords to manage), but alternating between a set of different passwords across the web and making sure all accounts that contain highly sensitive information (like email accounts or online banking accounts) have unique passwords is a good place to start.
Don't share your passwords with anyone.
Not family, not friends, not anyone. This may seem a little strict, but the reality is the more people you share your password with, the greater your chances of having that password compromised will be. Also, if you need to write your passwords down, keep them away from your computer, and never send them in emails. And if you suspect someone might have discovered one of your passwords, change it immediately.
Be careful how you share your information online.
Some online services -- such as social networking sites and gadgets that scrape information from other products -- may ask you for a password or an API key. If you choose to use these kinds of services, take a few minutes to learn more about what they do to keep your sensitive information secure. And just like sharing passwords with other people, you should be aware that sharing this information increases the chances that it could be compromised.
Another thing that can help keep your password secure is choosing a good security question and answer on the sites that offer that option. You've probably seen this before: When you're creating an account on many sites, you will be asked to choose a question to verify your identity if you forget your password.
Some sites will let you write in your own question; in these cases, you should make sure the Q&A you create isn't something that's easy to guess or something that your family and friends would know. Other sites will present you with a list of preset questions to choose from, such as "What is your mother's maiden name?" These kinds of questions are less secure, as they're easier for other people to guess the answer. In these cases, you should find a way to make your answer unique -- whether it's using the tips above, or by adding in other information -- so that even if someone guesses the answer, they won't know how to enter it properly.
Read more
about choosing a good password and security question.
More on Robots Exclusion Protocol (REP)
June 3, 2008
Posted by Prashanth Koppula, Product Manager
Web publishers often ask us how they can maximize their visibility on the web. Much of this has to do with search engine optimization -- making sure a publisher's content shows up on all the search engines.
However, there are some cases in which publishers need to communicate more information to search engines -- like the fact that they
don't
want certain content to appear in search results. And for that they use something called the
Robots Exclusion Protocol (REP)
, which lets publishers control how search engines access their site: whether it's controlling the visibility of their content across their site (via robots.txt) or down to a much more granular level for individual pages (via META tags).
Since it was introduced in the early '90s, REP has become the de facto standard by which web publishers specify which parts of their site they want public and which parts they want to keep private. Today, millions of publishers use REP as an easy and efficient way to communicate with search engines. Its strength lies in its flexibility to evolve in parallel with the web, its universal implementation across major search engines and all major robots, and in the way it works for any publisher, no matter how large or small.
While REP is observed by virtually all search engines, we've never come together to detail how we each interpret different tags. Over the last couple of years, we have worked with Microsoft and Yahoo! to bring forward standards such as
Sitemaps
and offer additional tools for webmasters. Since the original announcement, we have, and will continue to, deliver further improvements based on what we are hearing from the community.
Today, in that same spirit of making the lives of webmasters simpler, we're releasing detailed documentation about how we implement REP. This will provide a common implementation for webmasters and make it easier for any publisher to know how their REP directives will be handled by three major search providers -- making REP more intuitive and friendly to even more publishers on the web.
To see the major REP features currently implemented by Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo!, please see our
detailed post
on the Webmaster Central blog.
Google Site Search taps the power of the cloud
June 3, 2008
Posted by Posted by Nitin Mangtani, Lead Product Manager, Google Enterprise Search, and Rajat Mukherjee, Group Product Manager, Search
Search is never far from our minds -- not just on Google, but also for the millions of websites that don't yet have high-quality search. And since we've already built powerful search technologies into our computing infrastructure, site owners don't have to build it themselves. It's an aspect of something you might have heard about recently: "cloud computing".
Our ability to work in the cloud is one reason we've just announced
Google Site Search with enhanced index coverage
. Previously known as Custom Search Business Edition, this service gives any website the same relevance, ease of use and familiar search experience you get on Google.com. It takes just minutes to set up, and is hosted entirely by Google, so site owners can have great search capabilities with little or no maintenance and technical resources needed. We've also added enhanced index coverage and customization features that help us crawl and index all content (even pages deep within a site) -- and as a result, we can deliver comprehensive search results on any website.
It's not only webmasters who can take advantage of these features; so can site owners who want to maximize e-commerce opportunities and increase their conversions when they deliver a high-quality search experience to site visitors. Read more on the
Google Enterprise blog
to learn how you can offer better search on your site.
To see Google Site Search in action, watch this video featuring eHealthInsurance:
At long last, real-time stock quotes are here
June 2, 2008
Posted by Matthew Simmons, Market Data Gnome, and Katie Jacobs Stanton, Principal, New Business Development
We're very excited to tell you that real-time quotes on NASDAQ securities are now available on
Google Finance
. This is an important (and
way overdue
) development for everyone who consumes financial information. Historically, real-time stock data was not freely and widely accessible. Either buried behind subscription walls or brokerage sites, consumers typically had to live with 15 or 20 minute price delays. In the world of finance, time is indeed money, and it's critical to have timely and accurate data.
Providing free real-time stock quotes is consistent with
our mission
, and we'll continue to work hard to offer tools, features and more real-time data so investors can make informed and timely financial decisions.
Treasure Hunt: the last leg of the journey
June 1, 2008
Posted by Phillip Grasso, Manager, Engineering/Operations
Over the last few weeks, we've been
keeping you updated
on our Treasure Hunt competition — a puzzle contest designed to test your knowledge of computer science, networking, and low-level UNIX trivia. And now it's coming to a close. The fourth and final puzzle will be released at 1212448500. With it, we'll also be highlighting
Google Developer Day
, which is coming up on June 18 at
Wharf 8 in Sydney
.
We'll be announcing the contest winners (and their handsome rewards) once the results are tabulated, so keep your spyglasses here over the next few weeks. And, of course, all the prior weeks' puzzles are still available on the
main page
.
You've come this far... be ye real treasure hunters or just landlubbers in disguise?
Labels
accessibility
41
acquisition
26
ads
131
Africa
19
Android
58
apps
419
April 1
4
Asia
39
books + book search
48
commerce
12
computing history
7
crisis response
33
culture
12
developers
120
diversity
35
doodles
68
education and research
144
entrepreneurs at Google
14
Europe
46
faster web
16
free expression
61
google.org
73
googleplus
50
googlers and culture
202
green
102
Latin America
18
maps and earth
194
mobile
124
online safety
19
open source
19
photos
39
policy and issues
139
politics
71
privacy
66
recruiting and hiring
32
scholarships
31
search
505
search quality
24
search trends
118
security
36
small business
31
user experience and usability
41
youtube and video
140
Archive
2016
Nov
Oct
Sep
Aug
Jul
Jun
May
Apr
Mar
Feb
Jan
2015
Dec
Nov
Oct
Sep
Aug
Jul
Jun
May
Apr
Mar
Feb
Jan
2014
Dec
Nov
Oct
Sep
Aug
Jul
Jun
May
Apr
Mar
Feb
Jan
2013
Dec
Nov
Oct
Sep
Aug
Jul
Jun
May
Apr
Mar
Feb
Jan
2012
Dec
Nov
Oct
Sep
Aug
Jul
Jun
May
Apr
Mar
Feb
Jan
2011
Dec
Nov
Oct
Sep
Aug
Jul
Jun
May
Apr
Mar
Feb
Jan
2010
Dec
Nov
Oct
Sep
Aug
Jul
Jun
May
Apr
Mar
Feb
Jan
2009
Dec
Nov
Oct
Sep
Aug
Jul
Jun
May
Apr
Mar
Feb
Jan
2008
Dec
Nov
Oct
Sep
Aug
Jul
Jun
May
Apr
Mar
Feb
Jan
2007
Dec
Nov
Oct
Sep
Aug
Jul
Jun
May
Apr
Mar
Feb
Jan
2006
Dec
Nov
Oct
Sep
Aug
Jul
Jun
May
Apr
Mar
Feb
Jan
2005
Dec
Nov
Oct
Sep
Aug
Jul
Jun
May
Apr
Mar
Feb
Jan
2004
Dec
Nov
Oct
Sep
Aug
Jul
Jun
May
Apr
Feed
Google
on
Follow @google
Follow
Give us feedback in our
Product Forums
.