Four new themes

Posted by Jake Knapp, UI Designer and Manu Cornet, Software Engineer

Manu: Hey Jake, you still using that same old theme?
Jake: Well, yeah. I mean, I like it -- but I don't know... I guess it just doesn't feel as new as it used to.
Manu: I hear ya. Well, good news! Today four new themes are out there for everybody. Just go to the Themes tab under Settings...and ta da!
Jake: (click, click) There we go!
Manu: Should we tell people about why we created these four themes?
Jake: We should.
Manu: Assuming they're still reading.
Jake: Right. Okay, well, Gmail themes have been out since November, and I know we were ready for some new ones.
Manu: And we heard some of you asking for new ones too. So we thought about what we wanted to stare at all day long, since we work on Gmail.
Jake: I've been living in Zurich for the last year, and I missed Washington State, where I grew up. The Orcas Island theme definitely takes away a little bit of that homesickness with a new image each day of the week.


Manu: Homesickness eh? What about timesickness?
Jake: There's such a thing?
Manu: Totally. Sometimes I find myself timesick.
Jake: For when?
Manu: For a simpler time. For a time when processors weren't too fast. When graphics weren't too realistic.
Jake: Sounds like a real bummer. Too bad there's no cure for timesickness.
Manu: That's where you're dead wrong, my friend. Take a look at High Score. It's like being in a time machine isn't it?


Jake: (click, click) Aren't these colors a little bright?
Manu: Aren't you supposed to be a designer?
Jake: We'll have to agree to disagree, my friend. This one just isn't for me. I need something soothing. Something like laying face down in the grass.
Manu: I suppose you're talking about Turf now. What's the story behind that one?


Jake: Well, who doesn't like the color green?
Manu: And it doesn't change every day, so it was easier for us to make.
Jake: Are you suggesting we're lazy?
Manu: Prove that we're not.
Jake: We just made four new themes. How about that?
Manu: It took us ten months. And the fourth theme (Random) merely cycles through all the others.
Jake: Well, enjoy these themes for now. And, of course, let us know what you think. Maybe we'll have some more for you in the next ten months ;)

College football anyone?

Ahhh, fall: the morning air gets crisp, the leaves start to change to their autumnal hues... and most importantly, gridirons across the land are again alive with the pomp and pagentry of college football! This weekend marks the beginning of the 2009-2010 college football season. To celebrate the joyous renewal of pigskin rivalries, we've created this KML file marking the home stadiums of the 246 NCAA Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) and Football Championship Subdivision (FCS) teams. So whether you'd like to take a trip down memory lane and re-visit the stadium of your alma mater or if you'd like more information about the next opponent of your favorite team, we've got the file for you. We've included a quick overview of each school, a link to school news, the name and an image of their mascot, and their home stadium. Oh, and be sure to turn on '3D Buildings' for full effect.

Download the KML here.



FUN FACT: While authoring this file we noticed that, as you meander across the country, you'll notice an abundance of Bison, Bulldogs, and Tigers and a paucity of Bearcats, Jackrabbits, and Horned Frogs. How many unique mascots can you find?

We hope you enjoy visiting the stadiums and learning more about the schools, stadiums, and their geospatial distribution.

Posted by Adam (go Spartans!) Hughes, Sr. Strategist, Google Apps, and Pete (go Gophers!) Giencke, GIS Data Engineer

XMPP support on App Engine

Google App Engine is a product where developers can create and host web applications on Google infrastructure. Over on the App Engine team, we've noticed that there are lots of cool chat bots for things like translation or just for fun, but up until today deploying and maintaining a chat bot was a lot of hard work. So we're happy to announce the release of an API that makes it very simple to build Talk bots on top of App Engine. Check out the App Engine blog for more details.

Posted by: Michael Davidson
Software Enginer

New flowchart shapes and multi-line text in drawings

We've just released two new improvements to the drawings in Google Docs. First, we made it easier for you to build flowcharts in drawings by adding 20 new shapes for standard flowchart components. Second, we made it possible for you to have more control over drawing text layout by supporting explicit line breaks in text boxes and text within shapes.

Try out these new features by going to any document, spreadsheet, or presentation, and inserting a drawing.

Posted by: Evan Adams & Chris Nokleberg, Software Engineers

New Features in Forms

Today, we added a few new features to Google forms:

Grid question type

You can now quickly gather responses for a group of similar questions in a new, compact grid format. The new grid question type allows you to label a few columns and create as many rows as you like.

Each row result appears in its own spreadsheet column, with its own summary chart, which brings us to...

Improved results summary charts

We've polished up our results summary charts, with clearer formatting of statistics and better formatting of charts for each question type.

Bi-directional language support

The form editor now supports right-to-left (RTL) text input. When you enter RTL text in the form editor, it will automatically switch the directionality of the form editor and rendered forms (similar to Gmail and other Google Apps). This means your text and questions will flip directionality, making it easier for RTL users to create and use forms.

Sign-in to view form

If you are a Google Apps customer, there are now two options to help you use forms within your organization. In addition to the being able to automatically collect respondent's usernames, we now offer the ability to require sign-in to view a form. This provides an additional layer of security for sensitive forms.

Pre-populate a form with parameters

For developers who would like to integrate forms with their own applications, we now provide an easy way to pre-populate a form with data. Simply append an entry string for each response field you'd like to pre-populate. As an example, this URL...

http://spreadsheets.google.com/viewform?formkey=12345&entry_0=Barack&entry_1=Obama&entry_2=1600+Pennsylvania+Ave&entry_3=pistachios|spinach|broccoli&entry_4=8/4/1967

... pre-populates the form below....

Posted by: Eric Bogs, User Interface Software Engineer

Imagery & resources for LA wildfires

My wife and I were planning a trip to visit a friend in Pasadena for the upcoming Labor Day weekend. We've been hearing about the huge Station Fire burning in the nearby hills, and have been diligently searching for maps and news with the latest updates. For us, it's a mere matter of deciding whether we'll hop in the car tomorrow, but for many of you out there, the latest update on the fire's progress will help you keep tabs on loved ones or perhaps even your own property and safety. That's why a cross-team group at Google has launched a California Wildfires landing page, with:

• a My Maps map from the Los Angeles Times tracking the latest position of the fire,
• status updates from the US Forest Service,
• YouTube videos of the fire,
• a Google News gadget with latest news and
• other updates from relevant sources

In addition, our partners at DigitalGlobe have made available some stunning satellite imagery tracking the fires, which you can get by downloading this kml to open within Google Earth.

We also created a time-series of lower resolution imagery from NASA's MODIS Terra satellite. To watch the progression of the fire simply download the KML and click the play button in the upper left hand corner of the Google Earth viewport. You may want to play it more than once to allow the imagery to load if you want a smoother transition during playback. You can also turn individual images on and off.

If you live in the area, please stay safe. Depending on how the winds shift and the continuing heroic work of the firefighters, Laura and I just might see on you on Colorado Blvd. this weekend.

Posted by Jesse Friedman, Associate Product Marketing Manager

Google Chrome Turns 1!

A lot has happened for Google Chrome since the day we prematurely shipped our comic book, announced Google Chrome just a day before we initially intended, and pushed our browser out of the nest and into Beta. To take stock of this past year, we thought we'd celebrate with a birthday cake, birthday balloons, and a few interesting factoids. Since September 2, 2008, there have been:

• 51 developer releases, 21 beta releases or updates, and 15 stable releases or updates
  
• Over 20,600 bugs filed (4367 of them were duplicates, 3505 have been fixed, which leaves a whole lot left to go!)
  
• 11 external committers and bug editors, 46 external code contributors
  
• 50 Chrome Experiments
  
• 26 posts on the Google Chrome blog
  
• 12 Chrome Shorts, a collection of short films about Google Chrome
  
• A sequel to the comic in Japanese
  

More importantly, we've improved by over 150% on Javascript performance since our initial beta:

We've also added some of the most commonly requested features -- including form autofill, side-by-side view, the ability to remove items from the New Tab page, and full screen mode (just hit F11!) -- and even a bit of magic to make the entire web three-dimensional (okay, that was just a joke).

There's still plenty for us to do. Extensions for Google Chrome are well underway. We're also hard at work on Google Chrome for Mac and Linux, which are making rapid progress on the developer channel. Our Mac and Linux versions are missing a few key features (such as printing), so we're keeping them in the developer channel a little while longer to make sure that they provide a satisfying native experience on these platforms and meet our standards for stability and performance. If you like living on the cutting edge and don't mind the work in progress, you can download Google Chrome for Mac and Linux today through the developer channel.

Before we blow out the candles on Google Chrome's first birthday, we'd like to send a huge thank you to all our users who browse the web with Google Chrome, provide great feedback, and shared your all-round awesomeness with us. The second year of Google Chrome's life is shaping up to be a pretty exciting one, and we look forward to an action-packed year for the browser and the web. Stay tuned.

Posted by Brian Rakowski, Product Manager

New Policies for Marketplaces & Aggregators on Google Product Search

Today we're happy to introduce multi-client accounts as a solution to help aggregators and marketplaces manage feeds for multiple sellers under a single account. By allowing marketplaces better control over their sellers' product data, shoppers get more accurate and relevant information when they search for things to buy on Product Search, and individual sellers don't need to submit their own feeds. The multi-client accounts allow aggregators and marketplaces to consolidate and manage data feeds and reporting for sub-accounts, submit changes more rapidly, and get more accurate Google Checkout badging at the seller level. Marketplaces and aggregators will be required to use multi-client accounts to submit and manage their sellers' feeds starting on December 1st, 2009.

As a result of these changes, individual sellers on marketplaces no longer need to submit a feed to Google Product Search. To avoid duplicate listings we will be notifying individual sellers and retiring their accounts. Please see the full Marketplace and Aggregator policies for more information.

Posted by Paul Lee, Business Product Manager, Google Product Search

New in Calendar: Sports schedules and contacts' birthdays

Posted by Ian Whitfield, Software Engineering Intern

People keep track of lots of things in their Google Calendars — meetings, business trips, due dates and conference calls. But when I started my summer internship at Google, I wondered why it wasn't easier to add calendar events for the fun stuff in life, like birthdays and sports schedules.

Now, when you look under "Other Calendars," click "Add," then "Browse Interesting Calendars" (or use this link to the Calendar directory), you'll find calendars for hundreds of teams in dozens of sports leagues — everything from the National Football League to the Korean FA Cup.


When you subscribe to your favorite team's calendar, you'll see every game listed, updated in real time with the score as the game progresses.


You can also subscribe to a "Contacts' Birthdays and Events" calendar, which will add all of your contacts' birthdays to Google Calendar. Data is pulled from your Gmail contacts and your friends' Google profiles.

Finally, we also have two new Calendar Labs features for you to check out: "Dim future repeating events" makes recurring meetings more transparent over time, helping more important meetings pop out, and "Add any gadget by URL" gives you the flexibility put any gadget you'd like in your calendar.

Finding great stuff to read online

It could be argued that the evolution of internet memes can be largely attributed to students. It all started with forwarded links and emails ("OMG, have you seen this?!"), and has now developed into a set of online tools and sites designed specifically to help people consume and share lots of information.

But, as we all know, there are too many blogs and sites to possibly keep up with everything. So the real question is how to find the right sources to read or follow. I only followed a handful of blogs when I first started using Google Reader to track my favorite sites. Over time, I started incorporating recommendations from my friends, and my reading list quickly grew from 4 blogs to 34.

The Reader Team has worked hard to launch several sharing features that make it easier to find and subscribe to blogs that your friends like. But we thought we'd take it one step further by adding recommendations from some of the web's most prominent bloggers could to help take the stress out of the challenge of finding good stuff to read. First we asked leaders across a variety of fields -- journalism, tech, fashion, and food -- what they read online. Then we compiled their responses into our second edition of Power Readers, which we've expanded from last year's Power Readers in Politics.

Curious where Arianna Huffington goes to get different perspectives on the news? Ever wonder what other food blogs Mark Bittman reads? Visit www.google.com/powerreaders to explore and subscribe to recommended reading lists from all of our power readers, or to any individual blogs they like.

Posted by Zach Yeskel, Product Marketing Manager

More on today's Gmail issue

Posted by Ben Treynor, VP Engineering and Site Reliability Czar

Gmail's web interface had a widespread outage earlier today, lasting about 100 minutes. We know how many people rely on Gmail for personal and professional communications, and we take it very seriously when there's a problem with the service. Thus, right up front, I'd like to apologize to all of you — today's outage was a Big Deal, and we're treating it as such. We've already thoroughly investigated what happened, and we're currently compiling a list of things we intend to fix or improve as a result of the investigation.

Here's what happened: This morning (Pacific Time) we took a small fraction of Gmail's servers offline to perform routine upgrades. This isn't in itself a problem — we do this all the time, and Gmail's web interface runs in many locations and just sends traffic to other locations when one is offline.

However, as we now know, we had slightly underestimated the load which some recent changes (ironically, some designed to improve service availability) placed on the request routers — servers which direct web queries to the appropriate Gmail server for response. At about 12:30 pm Pacific a few of the request routers became overloaded and in effect told the rest of the system "stop sending us traffic, we're too slow!". This transferred the load onto the remaining request routers, causing a few more of them to also become overloaded, and within minutes nearly all of the request routers were overloaded. As a result, people couldn't access Gmail via the web interface because their requests couldn't be routed to a Gmail server. IMAP/POP access and mail processing continued to work normally because these requests don't use the same routers.

The Gmail engineering team was alerted to the failures within seconds (we take monitoring very seriously). After establishing that the core problem was insufficient available capacity, the team brought a LOT of additional request routers online (flexible capacity is one of the advantages of Google's architecture), distributed the traffic across the request routers, and the Gmail web interface came back online.

What's next: We've turned our full attention to helping ensure this kind of event doesn't happen again. Some of the actions are straightforward and are already done — for example, increasing request router capacity well beyond peak demand to provide headroom. Some of the actions are more subtle — for example, we have concluded that request routers don't have sufficient failure isolation (i.e. if there's a problem in one datacenter, it shouldn't affect servers in another datacenter) and do not degrade gracefully (e.g. if many request routers are overloaded simultaneously, they all should just get slower instead of refusing to accept traffic and shifting their load). We'll be hard at work over the next few weeks implementing these and other Gmail reliability improvements — Gmail remains more than 99.9% available to all users, and we're committed to keeping events like today's notable for their rarity.

Today's Gmail problems

Posted by David Besbris, Engineering Director

Update (2:37 pm): We've fixed the issue, and Gmail should be back up and running as usual. We're still investigating the root cause of this outage, and we'll share more information soon. Thanks for bearing with us.

We know many of you are having trouble accessing Gmail right now — we are too, and we definitely feel your pain. We don't usually post about minor issues here (the Apps status dashboard and the Gmail Help Center are usually where this kind of information goes). Because this is impacting so many of you, we wanted to let you know we're currently looking into the issue and hope to have more info to share here shortly. If you have IMAP or POP set up already, you should be able to access your mail that way in the meantime. We're terribly sorry for the inconvenience and will get Gmail back up and running as soon as possible.