Google Voice for Newbies: Voicemail Transcriptions

Voicemail transcription is, in my opinion, one of Google Voice's coolest features.  That's why I've saved it for my last Google Voice tip.  When someone leaves you a voicemail, Google Voice transcribes the message and gives you a variety of ways to access it.  The transcription process is fully automated, so sometimes the text isn't perfect, but it's usually enough to give you the basic idea of the message.



If you're a Gmail user, you can enable a voicemail player to show up underneath each voicemail notification you receive in Gmail by turning on the Google Voice player in mail lab. You can also set up your Google Voice account to send SMS notifications of the transcriptions to your mobile phone.





You might notice that some of the words in transcriptions are grayed out. This is an indication that we're not as confident about these particular words.

Heather and I hope that these "newbie" posts have helped some of you get your feet wet with Google Voice.  Even though this is the last in our series, that doesn't mean you can't continue to share feature suggestions and interesting use cases.  Share your Voice insights in the Google Voice Help Forum, and remember, the Google Voice Help Center is packed with useful information.  Happy calling!



Posted by Carol and Heather, Googlers

From Anime to Animation: Google Chrome Around the World

Earlier this week, I read an interesting article in the New York Times about shokunin kishitsu, or the 'craftsman's spirit.' The craftsman's spirit in Japanese culture basically appeals to all of us, regardless of vocation, to aspire to beauty in everything we do and create.

As we collaborated with artists around the globe to create themes for Google Chrome, we hope that bringing art from different cultures into the modern browser expresses some of that spirit. We've enjoyed hearing your thoughts on these designs and how you've used them to personalize your browser. For a friend who emailed me recently, the Hedgehog in the Fog theme brought back fond memories of his Russian childhood and the intrepid Yozhik (as the hedgehog is affectionately known in Russia). This Google Chrome theme is based on the 1975 animated film, which incidentally won "No.1 Animated film of all time" at the 2003 Laputa Animation Festival.

Beauty can be based on a heart-warming 34-year-old animation that makes us nostalgic, or cultural references that makes us who we are today. Our friends working on Google Chrome in Tokyo pointed us to a few Google Chrome themes that resonate with our users in Japan. These themes are based on a modern-day, participatory culture of remixing ideas. Take for example, the Google Chrome theme from global virtual pop star Hatsune Miku. Hatsune Miku began as a character in a vocal synthesis software package from Sapporo-based Crypton Future Media. But as musicians and artists created a body of work, including songs, drawings and animation for Hatsune Miku, she became a best-selling recording artist in Japan!

If you're curious for more, you can get a taste of Google Chrome themes from Japan, including TENORI-ON, Yamaha's nifty 16x16 visual musical instrument; the classic game Super Monkey Ball from Sega, and tea-loving ninjas Nintea from designer Panson Works and anime company Toei Animation (of Dragon Ball and Sailor Moon fame):

For the craftsmen -- the engineers -- working on Google Chrome around the globe, shokunin kishitsu provides lots of food for thought, as we continue to build on a browser designed to be fast, simple, and beautiful for users.

In the spirit of what our Japanese colleagues call "速い + ART" (or, speed + art), we'd like to leave you with a new video (with a surprise ending). Check it out at youtube.com/googlechromethemes, or by clicking on the image below.

Posted by Min Li Chan, Associate Product Marketing Manager

Evolving the look of Google Maps

Today the Google Maps team is rolling out a number of refinements to the look and feel of our maps, the biggest such changes since we first launched about 4.7 years ago.  In that time we've been steadily adding details like walkways, address labels, bus stops, new country coverage, and improved satellite imagery, but the look of the map hasn't changed much.



Today's changes are intended to keep the same information-rich map while making it easier to pick out the information that is most useful.  The changes affect both the 'Map' and 'Hybrid' styles, and include numerous refinements to color, density, typography, and road styling worldwide.  For example, in map view, local and arterial roads have been narrowed at medium zooms to improve legibility, and the overall colours have been optimized to be easier on the eye and conflict less with other things (such as traffic, transit lines and search results) that we overlay onto the map.  Hybrid roads have gained a crisp outline to make them easier to follow, and the overall look is now closer to an augmented satellite view instead of a simple overlay.



In some areas the changes are obvious, while in others they are quite subtle.  But overall we hope you'll agree they're a nice improvement.  Let's take a quick world tour to see some of these changes in action...



Taking a look at a far zoom of the area around my hometown London, notice the improved readability and density of the roads in the hybrid view. The motorways are easier to follow, and the A-roads are surfaced earlier:

Further north and more zoomed in still, the small town of Portinscale in England's beautiful Lake District shows the benefits of displaying increased road density.  Local roads, important in this context, are now visible:

Jumping west across the Atlantic to San Francisco and switching to map view demonstrates the changes in colour and font treatment. All the same information is maintained on the map, but there is more contrast between background detail such as local roads, and important orientation signals like neighbourhoods and major arterial roads: 

Heading south to Brasilia illustrates the advantages of the newly optimized road widths. The thinner treatment at this zoom makes it much easier to pick out fine detail in the complex local road shapes:

Heading northwest across the Pacific, Beijing sees some dramatic changes: the subway lines are coloured to fit local convention, the text is aligned with the streets, and the overall colour scheme is tuned to be more harmonious:

And finally, completing the journey where we started, note the finer road widths, cleaner rail lines, and less visually heavy colour scheme in London:

We hope you enjoy the changes to your local area too!





Posted by Jonah Jones, User Experience Designer, Google Maps

Fast, simple and stylish: Not your typical web browser

Google Chrome is a web browser designed to load web pages and web applications at lightning speed. Whether it's searching directly and quickly from the browser's address bar when you need to do some intensive research, or getting to the websites you rely on quickly at the click of the mouse, Google Chrome is just fast. Google Chrome celebrated its first birthday just over a month ago with a brand new stable release, which means even more speed improvements, as well as a fresh redesign of some of its most loved features.

More recently, we introduced Artist Themes for Google Chrome. We invited leading artists, architects, musicians, illustrators, filmmakers and fashion and interior designers from across the globe to create artwork for an unusual canvas: the modern web browser. Since then, we've enjoyed hearing thoughts from our users on these designs and how they've used them to personalize the browser. We've also been intrigued by the ways in which these themes have had interesting and unusual cultural resonance with people around the world.

To continue celebrating this collaboration of engineering and art, we've collaborated with our friends at YouTube to launch a new video (with a surprise ending) that we hope showcases the full beauty of these themes. Check it out at youtube.com/googlechromethemes or click the image below. And if you haven't tried Google Chrome recently, download the latest version and give it a whirl.

Posted by Min Li Chan, Google Chrome Team

Best Practices for Verifying and Cleaning up a Compromised Site

Written by Panayiotis Mavrommatis, Security Team

As part of Cyber Security Awareness Month, Google's Anti-Malware Team is publishing a series of educational blog posts inspired by questions we've received from users. October is a great time to brush up on cyber security tips and ensure you're taking the necessary steps to protect your computer, website, and personal information. For general cyber security tips, check out our online security educational series or visit http://www.staysafeonline.org/. To learn more about malware detection and site cleanup, visit the Webmaster Tools Help Center and Forum.

In our last post in this series, we explained Google's malware scanning process and how malware warning reviews work. It's not always clear to webmasters how to go about cleaning up their sites once they've been compromised, so this time we thought we'd share some best practices.


1) Verify Your Site with Google Webmaster Tools

If you have added and verified your site's ownership with Google Webmaster Tools, you can view a partial list of URLs where our system has detected suspicious content on your site, as well as samples of the malicious code. Once you've thoroughly cleaned up your site and addressed the vulnerability that allowed it to be compromised, it's easy to request a review through Webmaster Tools. We recognize that some site owners may want to use these tools even if they haven't already signed up with Webmaster Tools. For that reason, we enable you to verify ownership of your sites at any time, even if our systems have listed them as potentially dangerous.

2) If Your Site Has Been Compromised, Perform a Comprehensive Cleanup

If any part of your site has been compromised, thoroughly check all pages on the site for harmful code or content — not just the example pages listed in Webmaster Tools. Be sure to identify and address the underlying vulnerability that led to the compromise, or else reinfection is likely to occur.

Remember to Check Your Web Server Configuration

In addition to checking the contents of your site's pages and web server source code, remember to check that your web server configuration has not been modified by any intruders. If your web server has been compromised, your site's error pages can be modified to include custom HTML that actually redirects visitors to malicious sites.

Deleted & Error Pages: Dark Corners of Your Website Where Malware May Be Lurking

When a page is deleted from a site, the web server returns an error code (usually 404: Not Found) when requests to the "deleted" URLs are made. In addition to the error code in the HTTP header, the web server may send a custom error page or "Not Found" page, usually intended to help users find what they are looking for. If your site is infected, its error page can contain arbitrary HTML that exposes your visitors to malware. You can search our Webmaster Forum for information about how others are dealing with similar problems. The recently-launched malware samples feature in Google Webmaster Tools could also come in handy.

3) If You Switch Hosting Providers, Disable Access to the Old Version of Your Site

When a site is moved to a different hosting provider, the DNS records are updated such that the domain name points to a new IP address. In some cases, DNS caching can cause your domain name to continue resolving to the old IP address for some visitors even after the site has moved. For this reason, we recommend instructing your former hosting provider to stop serving any content for your site. This may cause some visitors to experience server errors for a few hours, but can protect them from visiting a potentially dangerous web server.


As always, our Webmaster Forum and StopBadware's BadwareBusters can be good sources of help and information when cleaning up a compromised site.

Design It Shelter Competition: The Winners

[Cross-posted from the Official Google SketchUp Blog]

Earlier this year, we teamed up with the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum to launch the Design It: Shelter Competition. People all over the world were invited to use Google SketchUp to design small buildings and submit them for consideration. We received over 600 entries from 68 countries – the level of participation was astounding. You can check out all the entries on the Guggenheim website.

Two prizes were offered: the People's Prize and the Juried Prize. To determine the winner of the People's Prize, students from the Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture winnowed down the entries to a list of ten finalists. Visitors to the Guggenheim website could vote for their favorite; the shelter with the most votes won. A jury of seven experts selected the winner of the Juried Prize.

Here's a video that announces the winners and talks a little bit about them:

The People's Prize

The winner of the People's Prize is the CBS – Cork Block Shelter
by David Mares of Setúbal, Portugal

The Juried Prize

The winner of the Juried Prize is the SeaShelter
by David Eltang of Aarhus, Denmark.

Each of the winners will receive transportation to New York City for two people, accommodation for two nights, "backstage" tours of both the Guggenheim Museum and our New York Google office, and free admission to a number of other NYC museums. The Juried Prize winner will also receive a check for one thousand dollars.


Congratulations to the finalists and to the winners. Thank you to everyone who submitted a design, and thanks to everyone who voted.

Posted by Aidan Chopra, SketchUp Evangelist

About Voicemail and Privacy

There were some conflicting reports yesterday about Google Voice voicemails being searchable online, so we wanted to clarify how Google Voice works.

Google Voice lets you access your voicemails online from your inbox. Your account is password-protected, like any other Google service, and its content cannot be read by anyone unless you choose to share the information in your account.

Google Voice can also send you an email notification when you have a new voicemail. The link points to a web page that displays only that particular message. The web address for that unique message is virtually impossible to guess.

However, if a user copied that unique URL from their email notification, and published it on a public website, then typical search engines, including Google, could have indexed it. Very few people chose to do this: of the millions of voicemail messages left on Google Voice, only 31 messages were made publicly searchable by users.

Nonetheless, three weeks ago, we decided that even if a user chose to include this unique URL in a public website, it would remain unsearchable. Since we implemented that change, no new messages have been indexed.

If you want to publicize a Google Voice message on your website, we provide a special embed code for this purpose. Visitors will then be able to listen to that particular message, but the message itself will remain unsearchable.


Posted by Vincent Paquet, Sr. Product Manager

Spotlight: Great public templates in the template gallery

Three months ago, we opened up the template gallery to everyone. Since then, we have seen a lot of great templates that cover many different use cases, from fun and imaginative to purely functional. We want to share some with you.

First, let's take a look at one template contributor, Jenny Blake, who has created a number of templates to help you think about your career and your life in general.

Template: Life checklist template
Genre: Life planning
We all get very wrapped up in our busy lives and forget to think of the 'big picture'. This template makes it easy to remember and keep track of what's important in your life.

Template: Professional development strategy
Genre: Career development planning
The path of our career is extremely important and having the right plan is essential to success. This template helps you create a step by step plan from six months down the road to the more long term future. It will help you better understand your goals and where you need to go in order to get to the next step in your career trajectory.

Template: Job interview one sheeter
Genre: Career development-interviewing
Have you ever gone into an interview and weren't prepared for a certain question? The best way to avoid this uncomfortable situation is to be organized and prepared. This template should cover all the basics and helps you better know and articulate your story when interviewing for that important position.

Here are three additional templates highlighting a variet of use cases.

Templates: A 2000 purple calendar, January 2010 monthly calendar
Creator: on-lineordering.com
Genre: Organization
With 2010 just around the corner, choose from 6 different 2010 calendar colors to start organizing your year. If you prefer to organize your life month by month instead of a yearly glance, simply upload the January 2010 template below when the New Year hits and you'll be able to have a month by month look at what's ahead.

Template: Maths planning template
Creator: James Mansell
Genre: Lesson planning
For all you math teachers or teachers of any subject really, this is a lesson plan template which will guide you through a days lesson from beginning to end on a weekly basis.

Template: Paper writing outline
Creator: Lutz Hohle
Genre: Paper writing
Whether you're writing a book or a paper for school, this template provides a nice outline for many types of writing, including ways to reference citations and headings to break up the various sections of the writing.

If you like what you see, click on any template above and choose 'Use this template'. This will create a copy of the template and store it in your docs list so you can use it and share with others.

Do you have a Google document, presentation or spreadsheet you think others could use as a starting point? Contribute it to the public template gallery.

Posted by: Joelle Fornengo, Docs User Operations

Spotlight: Great public templates in the template gallery

Three months ago, we opened up the template gallery to everyone. Since then, we have seen a lot of great templates that cover many different use cases, from fun and imaginative to purely functional. We want to share some with you.

First, let's take a look at one template contributor, Jenny Blake, who has created a number of templates to help you think about your career and your life in general.

Template: Life checklist template
Genre: Life planning
We all get very wrapped up in our busy lives and forget to think of the 'big picture'. This template makes it easy to remember and keep track of what's important in your life.

Template: Professional development strategy
Genre: Career development planning
The path of our career is extremely important and having the right plan is essential to success. This template helps you create a step by step plan from six months down the road to the more long term future. It will help you better understand your goals and where you need to go in order to get to the next step in your career trajectory.

Template: Job interview one sheeter
Genre: Career development-interviewing
Have you ever gone into an interview and weren't prepared for a certain question? The best way to avoid this uncomfortable situation is to be organized and prepared. This template should cover all the basics and helps you better know and articulate your story when interviewing for that important position.

Here are three additional templates highlighting a variet of use cases.

Templates: A 2000 purple calendar, January 2010 monthly calendar
Creator: on-lineordering.com
Genre: Organization
With 2010 just around the corner, choose from 6 different 2010 calendar colors to start organizing your year. If you prefer to organize your life month by month instead of a yearly glance, simply upload the January 2010 template below when the New Year hits and you'll be able to have a month by month look at what's ahead.

Template: Maths planning template
Creator: James Mansell
Genre: Lesson planning
For all you math teachers or teachers of any subject really, this is a lesson plan template which will guide you through a days lesson from beginning to end on a weekly basis.

Template: Paper writing outline
Creator: Lutz Hohle
Genre: Paper writing
Whether you're writing a book or a paper for school, this template provides a nice outline for many types of writing, including ways to reference citations and headings to break up the various sections of the writing.

If you like what you see, click on any template above and choose 'Use this template'. This will create a copy of the template and store it in your docs list so you can use it and share with others.

Do you have a Google document, presentation or spreadsheet you think others could use as a starting point? Contribute it to the public template gallery.

Posted by: Joelle Fornengo, Docs User Operations

Powerful IT for disaster relief

[Cross-posted with the Google Public Policy Blog]



When disaster strikes in the form of a hurricane, earthquake, famine or flood, information technology can play a crucial role in coordinating a local or global response. Earlier this month, Google hosted over 20 international humanitarian organizations in our Washington, D.C. office for a day of workshops to raise awareness and share experiences about how Google's geographic and data visualization technologies, such as Google Map Maker and the Google Data Visualization API, can aid relief efforts and various humanitarian efforts.



FEMA Administrator Craig Fugate kicked off the day's discussions with a talk about how agencies can leverage citizen-generated data and imagery to better coordinate response efforts, such as video from people using handheld cameras in the midst of a hurricane. He also cited Google Flu Trends as an example of how to glean public health insights from the wisdom of crowds.



After Craig spoke, the American Red Cross, World Bank and Plan International gave presentations on their own experiences using geographic and data visualization technologies in the field. American Red Cross, for example, is using Google Maps to display open shelters (left) and building damage assessments (right) on the map:

Several Google team members then led discussions and presentations on the myriad Google tools at the disposal of relief agencies: Google Earth, Google Maps, Google Map Maker and the Map Maker Data Download program for Africa, Google Labs Fusion Tables, the Google Data Visualization API and more. See, for example, how UNOSAT used Google Map Maker to aid flood relief efforts in West Africa by clearly mapping transport networks (for more examples of Map Maker in action, see here).



Below are a few photos from the event. Our next workshop, hosted in partnership with the United Nations in New York, will be held in November. If you're interested in more details, give @googlepubpolicy a shout on Twitter.









Posted by Jen Mazzon, Maps Community Organizer