We're now entering the third week of Google's Treasure Hunt competition, a puzzle contest designed to test your knowledge of computer science, networking, and low-level UNIX trivia. Last week we posted the second puzzle. This week's puzzle is set to be released on Tuesday, May 27 at 10 a.m. PDT. We'll also be featuring our brand-new San Francisco office along with it.
We'll be giving out a few prizes for the fastest contestants to complete each question. There will also be a grand prize for the contestant who correctly answers all four questions in the shortest cumulative time (time is defined as the time between the question's release and the submission of the correct answer). The previous puzzles will still be accessible off of the main page.
The treasure is within reach, so grab yer shovels and keep on diggin', mateys!
2008年05月26日
2008年05月24日
San Francisco office rides the wave
San Francisco has been attracting freethinking writers, artists, instigators, and entrepreneurs for more than 150 years. The people who built, experienced, and created this diverse place have all shared a passion for innovation and extending beyond the conventional. San Franciscans kicked off the gold rush and made the first pair of jeans, received the first transcontinental telephone call in 1915, came together for the Summer of Love and the original Burning Man, and played a major role in the dot-com and Web 2.0 booms. The City always seems to blaze new trails.
Sure, our summers are cool and foggy, our hills are steep, and our streets are twisty. But SF Googlers think this is the perfect place to work. Earlier this year, our own "Father of the Internet" Vint Cerf launched the office by inspiring the assembled engineers to think about today's challenges at scale, speaking about the challenges of interplanetary IP communication, the future of the Internet, and who's to blame for IPv4's limited address space (Vint says it's him).
We in the SF office contribute to a broad cross-section of the Google world in a number of ways: we write software for managing big computing clusters and keeping them efficient; we analyze vast piles of data to understand how the web works; we engineer reliability, scalability, and security into the apps many people rely on; we share our tools and methods with the open source community; we create internal productivity apps to support our engineers.
And that's just in engineering. The SF office also supports ad agency customers, local markets and classifieds. We're home to our philanthropic arm Google.org, and we make time to participate in community volunteer programs through our employee-created Google Cares-SF program. We have an active green committee, access to the GFleet car-share program, and we're the first plastic-bottlefree office among all of the Googleplexes.
While we may be new, Google SF is growing fast. With close proximity and access to Mountain View and the rest of the Silicon Valley, we span the best of worlds: local and global, campus and city, 'burbs and urban, highways and dirt roads. We're always looking for talented and passionate people to join our team, so if you want to be part of building the next big thing, we'd love to hear from you.
And in case you need another reason to come visit us in Shaky Town, Google I/O, our largest developer conference to date, takes place at the Moscone Center on May 28-29. It's not too late to register -- we hope to see you there.
Sure, our summers are cool and foggy, our hills are steep, and our streets are twisty. But SF Googlers think this is the perfect place to work. Earlier this year, our own "Father of the Internet" Vint Cerf launched the office by inspiring the assembled engineers to think about today's challenges at scale, speaking about the challenges of interplanetary IP communication, the future of the Internet, and who's to blame for IPv4's limited address space (Vint says it's him).
We in the SF office contribute to a broad cross-section of the Google world in a number of ways: we write software for managing big computing clusters and keeping them efficient; we analyze vast piles of data to understand how the web works; we engineer reliability, scalability, and security into the apps many people rely on; we share our tools and methods with the open source community; we create internal productivity apps to support our engineers.
And that's just in engineering. The SF office also supports ad agency customers, local markets and classifieds. We're home to our philanthropic arm Google.org, and we make time to participate in community volunteer programs through our employee-created Google Cares-SF program. We have an active green committee, access to the GFleet car-share program, and we're the first plastic-bottlefree office among all of the Googleplexes.
While we may be new, Google SF is growing fast. With close proximity and access to Mountain View and the rest of the Silicon Valley, we span the best of worlds: local and global, campus and city, 'burbs and urban, highways and dirt roads. We're always looking for talented and passionate people to join our team, so if you want to be part of building the next big thing, we'd love to hear from you.
And in case you need another reason to come visit us in Shaky Town, Google I/O, our largest developer conference to date, takes place at the Moscone Center on May 28-29. It's not too late to register -- we hope to see you there.
Exploring "las oportunidades" for small businesses
Last week, I flew from our Phoenix office to Washington, D.C. to deliver our first U.S. seminar for small business. It's a simple and straightforward presentation about how Google tools can help small businesses establish a presence online, work more collaboratively and efficiently, and earn money from their websites through our AdSense program.
If you were able to catch a glimpse of our testimony in front of the U.S. House Small Business Committee a couple of weeks ago, you'll know that helping small businesses thrive on the Internet is something we're really passionate about. And we thought we should share the training first with one of the most entrepreneurial communities in the U.S.: Hispanic Americans. Working with the enthusiastic support of the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce and the League of United Latin American Citizens, I'm happy to say that this first session is in Spanish. We call it "Google 101 para pequeñas empresas."
If you were able to catch a glimpse of our testimony in front of the U.S. House Small Business Committee a couple of weeks ago, you'll know that helping small businesses thrive on the Internet is something we're really passionate about. And we thought we should share the training first with one of the most entrepreneurial communities in the U.S.: Hispanic Americans. Working with the enthusiastic support of the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce and the League of United Latin American Citizens, I'm happy to say that this first session is in Spanish. We call it "Google 101 para pequeñas empresas."
2008年05月22日
Google Sites now open to everyone
A few months ago we launched Google Sites exclusively as part of Google Apps for companies and organizations that wanted to use the service on their own domains. Now we've made it easy for anyone to set up a website to share all types of information -- team projects, company intranets, community groups, classrooms, clubs, family updates, you name it -- in one place, for a few people, a group or the world. You can securely host your own website at http://sites.google.com/[your-website] and add as many pages as you like for free.
Getting started with Google Sites is easy. You can create different types of pages from scratch with the click of a button, and you can embed documents, calendars, photos, videos and gadgets directly into those pages. Similar to Google Docs, built-in editing tools allow for popular text and formatting changes to be made in a straightforward, WYSIWYG manner. Once your site is up and running, inviting people to edit or view your content is as simple as entering in their email address (of course, you can change access levels at any time). And you (or anyone who has editing privileges) can add or edit information whenever you'd like.
Getting started with Google Sites is easy. You can create different types of pages from scratch with the click of a button, and you can embed documents, calendars, photos, videos and gadgets directly into those pages. Similar to Google Docs, built-in editing tools allow for popular text and formatting changes to be made in a straightforward, WYSIWYG manner. Once your site is up and running, inviting people to edit or view your content is as simple as entering in their email address (of course, you can change access levels at any time). And you (or anyone who has editing privileges) can add or edit information whenever you'd like.
We have a Doodle 4 Google national winner!
The results are in from last week's public vote for its favorite doodle from the Doodle 4 Google art competition, in which we invited students in grades K-12 to design the Google logo around the theme "What if...?"
Today, we're pleased to announce the winner: Grace (Suryung) Moon, a 6th grader from Canyon Middle School in Castro Valley, California. Her creation, "Up in the Clouds" was selected for its artistry and creativity as well as for its interpretation of our "What if...?" theme. Grace's doodle will replace our regular logo on our homepage tomorrow, May 22nd, and Grace will be awarded a $10,000 college scholarship and a $25,000 technology grant for her school in recognition of this achievement.
Congratulations also go to the three national finalists. They were selected as having the best doodle in their grade groups and will each receive a laptop computer:
Grades K-3
Spencer Norton ~ Ashbrook Elementary School, Lumberton, NJ
Grades 7-9
Rebecca Olene ~ Pioneer Ridge Freshmen Center, Carver, Minnesota
Grades 10-12
Gabriel Kitzman ~ Elbert School Dist. #200, Kiowa, Colorado
To celebrate our winner and all of the talented finalists, we held an awards ceremony at the Googleplex for the 40 regional winners today. The finalists and their families joined us for a fun-filled day with activities ranging from face painting to a doodling master class with our own Chief Google Doodler Dennis Hwang, and we couldn't have had more fun.
Thanks to everyone who participated in this year's Doodle 4 Google competition. We enjoyed seeing the creativity and imagination of students across the U.S. and hope you did too.
Today, we're pleased to announce the winner: Grace (Suryung) Moon, a 6th grader from Canyon Middle School in Castro Valley, California. Her creation, "Up in the Clouds" was selected for its artistry and creativity as well as for its interpretation of our "What if...?" theme. Grace's doodle will replace our regular logo on our homepage tomorrow, May 22nd, and Grace will be awarded a $10,000 college scholarship and a $25,000 technology grant for her school in recognition of this achievement.
Congratulations also go to the three national finalists. They were selected as having the best doodle in their grade groups and will each receive a laptop computer:
Grades K-3
Spencer Norton ~ Ashbrook Elementary School, Lumberton, NJ
Grades 7-9
Rebecca Olene ~ Pioneer Ridge Freshmen Center, Carver, Minnesota
Grades 10-12
Gabriel Kitzman ~ Elbert School Dist. #200, Kiowa, Colorado
To celebrate our winner and all of the talented finalists, we held an awards ceremony at the Googleplex for the 40 regional winners today. The finalists and their families joined us for a fun-filled day with activities ranging from face painting to a doodling master class with our own Chief Google Doodler Dennis Hwang, and we couldn't have had more fun.
Thanks to everyone who participated in this year's Doodle 4 Google competition. We enjoyed seeing the creativity and imagination of students across the U.S. and hope you did too.
