Google Code University goes back to school

Fall is on the way — the leaves are changing, college football is in full swing and you're probably already knee-deep in schedules, new books and assignments. At Google, we're also prepping for back to school with the newest version of Google Code University. For the fall we've not only made our online course repository more slick and easier to navigate, but we've added new content and features to help you tackle your CS courses.

Some of the newest updates include:

• Google's C++ Course
• Android Application Development - Cal Poly

We've also recently added several Discussion Forums with topics like web security, Python and C++ where you can ask your fellow students questions, or post interesting articles and resources. We'd also love your input on new course content in our General Forum.

Good luck with the new semester!

Posted by Mary Radomile, Education Program Manager

Earn money online from your passions

Got a popular blog? Run an online business? Own a special interest website? Well, here's some good news: you can earn some extra money from doing the things you already enjoy doing.

Every day, students like you spend hours creating content on the web. You blog. You post photos, artwork, DIY projects, and videos. Some of you even run your own successful online business. Why not earn some extra spending money to pay for hosting fees, books, tuition, or non-dorm food with Google AdSense?

Simply paste an HTML snippet on your blog or website to begin serving targeted Google ads and earn money when people click on or view the ads.

If you don't own a blog or know anything about web page design, set up a blog for free with Blogger and before you know it, your page will be online and ready to go. Best of all, Blogger can automatically set Google AdSense up for you, so you can get started faster without worrying about coding your site.

Learn more about how serving Google ads can help you earn money on the web: google.com/ads/calstudents

Posted by Deborah Chang, AdSense Team

Google Voice, explained

While Google Voice has features that almost anyone would find useful, it's especially well suited for students. If you are anything like me when I was a student, you'll appreciate the automatic voicemail transcriptions, free outgoing SMS, and voicemail forwarded to your email.

If you're not very familiar with Google Voice, here's a short video overview that'll give you a taste of what it can do:

If you're liking what you see, head over to our new YouTube channel at youtube.com/googlevoice to see 10 more videos showcasing all that Google Voice offers:

Google Voice is currently available in the US by invite only. Request your invite at google.com/voiceinvite.

Posted Jason Toff, Google Voice team

Introducing Google Buzz

If you haven't yet read about Google Buzz, here's some exciting news cross-posted from the Official Google Blog!

We've blogged before about our thoughts on the social web, steps we've taken to add social features to our products, and efforts like OpenSocial that propose common tools for building social apps. With more and more communication happening online, the social web has exploded as the primary way to share interesting stuff, tell the world what you're up to in real-time and stay more connected to more people. In today's world of status messages, tweets and update streams, it's increasingly tough to sort through it all, much less engage in meaningful conversations.

Our belief is that organizing the social information on the web — finding relevance in the noise — has become a large-scale challenge, one that Google's experience in organizing information can help solve. We've recently launched innovations like real-time search and Social Search, and today we're taking another big step with the introduction of a new product, Google Buzz.

Google Buzz is a new way to start conversations about the things you find interesting. It's built right into Gmail, so you don't have to peck out an entirely new set of friends from scratch — it just works. If you think about it, there's always been a big social network underlying Gmail. Buzz brings this network to the surface by automatically setting you up to follow the people you email and chat with the most. We focused on building an easy-to-use sharing experience that richly integrates photos, videos and links, and makes it easy to share publicly or privately (so you don't have to use different tools to share with different audiences). Plus, Buzz integrates tightly with your existing Gmail inbox, so you're sure to see the stuff that matters most as it happens in real time.



We're rolling out Buzz to all Gmail accounts over the next few days, so if you don't see it in your account yet, check back soon. We also plan to make Google Buzz available to businesses and schools using Google Apps, with added features for sharing within organizations.

On your phone, Google Buzz is much more than just a small screen version of the desktop experience. Mobile devices add an important component to sharing: location. Posts tagged with geographical information have an extra dimension of context — the answer to the question "where were you when you shared this?" can communicate so much. And when viewed in aggregate, the posts about a particular location can paint an extremely rich picture of that place. Check out the Mobile Blog for more info about all of the ways to use Buzz on your phone, from a new mobile web app to a Buzz layer in Google Maps for mobile.



We've relied on other services' openness in order to build Buzz (you can connect Flickr and Twitter from Buzz in Gmail), and Buzz itself is not designed to be a closed system. Our goal is to make Buzz a fully open and distributed platform for conversations. We're building on a suite of open protocols to create a complete read/write developer API, and we invite developers to join us on Google Code to see what is available today and to learn more about how to participate.

We really hope you enjoy the experiences we've built within Gmail and for mobile phones. If you want to learn more, visit buzz.google.com. We look forward to continuing to evolve and improve Google Buzz based on your feedback.

Posted by Todd Jackson, Product Manager, Gmail and Google Buzz

The Google Docs for students page

We recently launched the docs for students page which highlights how various student populations can use Google Docs in their daily life. We wanted to take a chance to highlight this page for all of you students as we're pretty sure you'll relate to one or more of them:

If you are an RA, you'll identify with Marie. She plans really fun trips for her whole dorm using forms.

For all you math majors out there, you may be interested in how Christine uses the equation editor in Google Docs to collaborate with others and power through her Probabilistic Systems Analysis class.

For any of you working towards your PhD as Chandler is in International Relations, you'll find the footnotes and revision history features invaluable.

English majors may really identify with Steve, as he uses a lot of the editing tools such as comments, strikethrough and double space to perfect his English papers.

Finally, for those of you who are foreign language majors, you'll most likely enjoy using the translate document feature that Lisa uses in her studies.

We hope these characters and their stories really enlighten you to what's possible with Google docs as a student. These characters use Docs to enhance and manage their academic and social lives and we hope you will too.

Posted by Joelle Fornengo, Google Docs team

Get your Nexus One!

In case you didn't catch the post on the Official Google Blog yesterday, we announced a new Google hosted web store where you can easily purchase selected mobile Android devices and service plans online. As a student, it's especially important to stay connected, both on and off campus, and our hope is to help create devices that allow you to do that seamlessly.

The first phone we'll be selling through this new web store is the Nexus One — a convergence point for mobile technology, apps and the Internet. Nexus One, manufactured by HTC, is an exemplar of what's possible on mobile devices through Android — when cool apps meet a fast, bright and connected computer that fits in your pocket. It's the first in what we expect to be a series of products which we will bring to market with our operator and hardware partners and sell through our online store.

So head to http://www.google.com/phone to check out the store and take a full tour of the new Nexus One.

Posted by Anna De Paula Hanika, Android Team

Google Docs celebrates the holidays with templates and launches

The Google Docs team is celebrating the holidays in big ways this year. With nine launches in the last two weeks - and a gallery full of festive templates - there will be no shortage of cheer!

Holiday Templates:

There are a lot of great holiday templates available in the Google Docs template gallery. Templates include holiday shopping lists, holiday newsletters, party invitations, RSVP forms and much more. Whether you are planning a recipe swap, family potluck, ski trip, a charity trip or need a party RSVP form, the new holiday themes in forms can also make this season a little brighter. To try out the holiday themes, create a form and the click "Theme: theme name" to see all the themes that are available.

The Docs team has also launched several new features, just in time for the holidays:

• Real-time presence for presentations: now when editing a presentation with a co-editor, you can see which slides he or she is editing, and if you're on the same slide, you can see which element – text box, shape, image, video, etc -- is being edited.
• Sharing emails get a face-lift: More colorful emails and icons now indicate the type of document at-a-glance, better showcasing custom messages and making access even more simple.
• Sort by relevance: When searching your docs, results will now display the items most relevant to your search at the top of the list.
• Export all documents: We've also added an "Export all" option, which lets you export all your docs (up to 2GB at a time) with one click. This is the equivalent of almost 100,000 Google Docs.
• Change owner in a spreadsheet: A feature already available for documents and presentations, you can now change the owner of a spreadsheet. This is helpful if you are working in a group and the owner of the document leaves your group or no longer needs to work on that document.

We hope you enjoy these holiday treats when using Google Docs this holiday season. And stay tuned for more helpful updates in 2010.

Posted by Peter Harbison, Google Docs team

Happy holidays from the Picasa team: more photos, fewer wires

Because we know students take a lot of pictures and appreciate great deals, we wanted to let you know about a special offer from Picasa. We made extra storage for Gmail and Picasa Web Albums more affordable about a month ago, and now we've partnered with Eye-Fi to make it even easier to get your photos into the cloud.

Eye-Fi offers WiFi-enabled memory cards that make your existing camera wireless, so it's easy to upload photos and videos right to Picasa Web Albums or straight to your computer -- no cables required. For a limited time, when you buy 200 GB of Google paid storage for $50, you'll get a free Eye-Fi card (a $95 value) with free shipping.

Visit picasa.google.com/eyefi.html to get yours today, and happy holidays from the Picasa team!

Posted by Zach Yeskel, Product Marketing Manager

Introducing Google Sites templates

We're excited to announce the launch of Google Sites site templates. Site templates are pre-packaged sites that anyone can use to make creating your own website even easier. This is especially valuable for students so that when you're making your site you can now skip a few steps, and instead of making a site from scratch, start with a template.

You can use site templates to organize, publish and share information about your school, class, projects, fraternity or sorority, school club, intramural teams, or any other organization or event.

Additionally if you create a site that you think others might like or use, you can create a template and add it to the gallery!

To browse site templates click the Create new site button. You can choose one of the popular templates highlighted on the site creation page, or you can click Browse the gallery for more to see more options.

Visit www.sites.google.com to start using site templates today!

Posted by Ashley Chandler, Google Sites Team

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

Introducing Google Building Maker

Ever found yourself being an armchair tourist looking at 3D buildings of your home town in Google Earth? Have you ever wanted to highlight that famous building in your city or on your campus, but not really been sure where to start?

Building Maker helps you put buildings on the 3D map.

Today we launched Google Building Maker, a fun and simple (and crazy addictive, it turns out) online tool for creating buildings for Google Earth. Basically, you pick a building and construct a model of it using aerial photos and simple 3D shapes – both of which we provide. When you're done, we take a look at your model. If it looks right, and if a better model doesn't already exist, we add it to the 3D Buildings layer in Google Earth.

Check out this video to see Building Maker in action:

For now, you can choose to make buildings in any of about 50 cities. We'll keep adding more cities, but don't feel left out if we don't have your hometown yet — modeling in a place you've never been is a fantastic way to discover more about it.

Simply, make sure you have the latest version of Google Earth installed on your computer. If you're on a Mac, you will need to download the Google Earth plug-in directly.

Building Maker is free and available in 14 languages. Go to www.google.com/buildingmaker to join the worldwide mapping community. Have fun!

Posted by Mark Limber, Product Manager and Matt Simpson, User Experience Designer

Driving the Solar System with Google

[From time to time we invite guests to blog about initiatives of interest, and are very pleased to have Stephen Savage join us here again. Stephen is Arizona State University's Geo-Archaeological Information Applications Lab IT Manager of the Archaeological Research Institute at the School of Human Evolution and Social Change. You might remember his previous posts about Exploring exploplanets using Google Earth's API or his work on the Digital Archaeological Atlas of the Holy Land.]

For years, astronauts and rocket scientists at NASA and JPL have had all the fun. Billions of people on Earth have seen pictures of Apollo 17 astronauts Gene Cernan and Harrison Schmidt driving their "dune buggy" on the Moon. Billions more have seen pictures of NASA's Mars landers, Spirit and Opportunity. We've all wished we could be the ones to take these incredible toys out for a spin on the Red Planet or the Moon.

Now, thanks to Google, you can do the next best thing -- you can drive a virtual rover model on Google's Mars or Moon (or a skateboard on Earth), and experience the real topography of these places. We at ASU developed a "Drive the Solar System" website where you can explore how the power of Google Mars, Google Moon and Google Earth has been brought to the web. You can put your rover or skateboard down anyplace on Mars, the Moon or Earth and drive it anywhere you want to go. Explore the Apollo landing sites or Olympus Mons, the largest volcanic cone in the solar system. Drive down the Valles Marinaris, the canyon on Mars that dwarfs Arizona's Grand Canyon, or kick-flip your skateboard down the Amazon. And that's not all. You can visit all the other planets and the largest moons in the Solar System too.

But you can do more than drive or look at these strange new worlds -- you can also look at these places in depth with detailed information about each place you can visit included.

So if you've ever wanted to be an astronaut, visit http://gaialab.asu.edu/SolarSystem and see what you've been missing!

Posted by Stephen Savage, Geo-Archaeological Information Applications Lab IT Manager, Archaeological Research Institute, School of Human Evolution and Social Change at Arizona State University

Driving the Solar System with Google

[From time to time we invite guests to blog about initiatives of interest, and are very pleased to have Stephen Savage join us here again. Stephen is Arizona State University's Geo-Archaeological Information Applications Lab IT Manager of the Archaeological Research Institute at the School of Human Evolution and Social Change. You might remember his previous posts about Exploring exploplanets using Google Earth's API or his work on the Digital Archaeological Atlas of the Holy Land.]

For years, astronauts and rocket scientists at NASA and JPL have had all the fun. Billions of people on Earth have seen pictures of Apollo 17 astronauts Gene Cernan and Harrison Schmidt driving their "dune buggy" on the Moon. Billions more have seen pictures of NASA's Mars landers, Spirit and Opportunity. We've all wished we could be the ones to take these incredible toys out for a spin on the Red Planet or the Moon.

Now, thanks to Google, you can do the next best thing -- you can drive a virtual rover model on Google's Mars or Moon (or a skateboard on Earth), and experience the real topography of these places. We at ASU developed a "Drive the Solar System" website where you can explore how the power of Google Mars, Google Moon and Google Earth has been brought to the web. You can put your rover or skateboard down anyplace on Mars, the Moon or Earth and drive it anywhere you want to go. Explore the Apollo landing sites or Olympus Mons, the largest volcanic cone in the solar system. Drive down the Valles Marinaris, the canyon on Mars that dwarfs Arizona's Grand Canyon, or kick-flip your skateboard down the Amazon. And that's not all. You can visit all the other planets and the largest moons in the Solar System too.

But you can do more than drive or look at these strange new worlds -- you can also look at these places in depth with detailed information about each place you can visit included.

So if you've ever wanted to be an astronaut, visit http://gaialab.asu.edu/SolarSystem and see what you've been missing!

Posted by Stephen Savage, Geo-Archaeological Information Applications Lab IT Manager, Archaeological Research Institute, School of Human Evolution and Social Change at Arizona State University

YouTube EDU goes international - a global classroom for all

Universities from the Europe and Israel have now joined YouTube EDU. The site now provides over 45,000 videos from over 20 top universities in nine countries with academic lectures, public talks and college life from universities including Cambridge University, The Open University, (UK), INSEAD, (France),Bocconi University (Italy), Open University of Catalonia, (Spain) University of Gronigen (The Netherlands), Moscow State University (Russia) - in addition to the 200 US universities already on the site.

The international version now includes a drop-down menu to filter content based on language of choice. For example, select French and find content from HEC in Paris and also the French-Canadian University of Montreal, or set to 'All' to browse videos in all languages. The Directory also enables subjects to be browsed - e.g. select 'Business', 'Engineering' or 'Literature' to see content available. Although this feature is currently only available for English at the moment, we are looking to roll-out to languages as more universities join.

Now, go learn something!

Posted by Anna De Paula Hanika on behalf of the YouTube EDU team

Just released: new version of Google SketchUp

Students, educators and fans of SketchUp, rejoice: we just released Google SketchUp Pro 7.1! This new version is available as a free upgrade to your existing student, instructor or lab license. If you're new to SketchUp 3D modeling software, Google offers great pricing for the education community. Students pay just $49 for a year-long Pro license, lab licenses are between $15-$30 per seat, depending whether you choose a 1, 2 or 3 year license; and, instructors can get themselves a Pro license at no charge. Learn more on our Education program on the SketchUp website.

SketchUp Pro 7.1 has been our most quickly adopted update because it adds a bunch of new features while providing enhanced performance and fixes for a lot of known issues. Of particular interest for Education is the new feature called Get Photo Texture, which allows you to quickly model buildings using Google Maps Street View imagery.

A popular K-12 activity guides students through the process of modeling a local building (such as their school building) using Google Earth and Google SketchUp. With the release of 7.1, the activity gets even more compelling because students can immediately access Street View imagery to apply to their model. Students can also access and edit existing buildings in the Google 3D Warehouse using the new "Nearby Buildings" feature.

For industrial design, mechanical design and architecture/landscape courses, LayOut 2.1 is bundled with the release. LayOut 2.1 improves on its rich 2D presentation features by adding Dimensioning. Now any of models can be annotated or dimensioned directly in LayOut without having to go back to the original model. Scaled printing, simple construction documentation, woodworking and even site planning is a snap. That's right, you heard the pun, the new dimensioning allows you to snap and measure from points in the embedded model!

All users will see faster performance when it comes to large, complex or heavily textured models. Google SketchUp Pro 7.1 continues the tradition of SketchUp's rich feature set, intuitive interface and our commitment to offering great pricing for Educators and Students. Learn more on our SketchUp website for Education.

Posted by James Therrien, Google SketchUp Team

Day in the life of a Docs student

(Cross-posted on the Google Docs blog)

The Google Docs team is getting ready for back to school. We've been doing our homework this summer to make your school year go a little smoother. Today we're launching a handful of features that will benefit both students and teachers. Speaking from experience, as students ourselves, we know that these features will come in handy on any given day. Check out the schedule below to see how.

Time	Schedule
9:00am	Spanish Literature [Bldg200-253]
	Writing essays about Gabriel García Márquez is hard enough in English; try it in Spanish. At least now I can make sure I'm on the right track by defining and translating Spanish words. Like any research essay, I have to double space the document and cite my sources. I use footnotes to cite sources. They are automatically numbered so I don't have to keep track of them and they sit in the margins for easy reference. As of today, I can even print footnotes as endnotes, consolidated on separate pages at the end of my document.
10:00am	Gym break
	I keep track of my daily workout progress using a variety of Docs templates. Today I'll be using the Runner's Log:
11:00am	Hiking Club [Student Union]
	The other club officers and I make sure that we cover all important topics by collaborating on an agenda outline before each weekly meeting. As the secretary, I also take notes on the outline so I like being able to customize how the list is formatted. The officers also work together to make sure our website is up to date. With Google Sites we can each edit the site when necessary without learning html. My favorite feature is the ability to embed maps, documents, and calendars directly into a page.
12:00pm	Lunch
	I keep up to date on the go by viewing and editing my docs on a mobile phone.
1:00pm	Probabilistic Systems Analysis Lecture [Bldg32-123]
	This class moves pretty fast. My friends and I sit near each other and take notes on a single Google Doc to make sure we don't miss a thing. With the new equation editor feature, it's much easier to read and understand each others' equation notations. And whenever I walk into class a little late, I can just do a revision comparison of our shared notes document to see exactly what I've missed.
2:00pm	Solid State Chemistry Tutorial [Bldg5-320]
	In order to lead this tutorial, I often put together some slides beforehand and share them with my students. Now that Google Docs Presentations supports subscripts and superscripts, it's even easier to make and edit these slides.

Want to try out these features in your routine? Find some more detailed information about the features here.

Posted by: Rita Chen and Stephanie Vezich, Google Docs Summer Interns

Creating your digital resume

Over on the Docs Blog, Dr. Helen Barrett - a retired teacher educator and independent researcher - has written up some good tips about using "E-Portfolios" as a sort of digital resume, and how you can use Google tools to help you create your own.

If you're interested in learning more, check out this example and stop by the Docs Blog to read more about how you can use Google Sites and Docs - among other online tools - to build your own virtual portfolio.

Posted by Peter Harbison, Google Docs Marketing Manager