Archive for July, 2009

by Mike Krumboltz

Forget Hollywood — the past seven days were all about Washington, D.C. The president hosted a highly anticipated get-together to talk about race relations, while the birther community set out to prove that the commander in chief wasn't born in the United States. Both events caused a stir in Search and on the Buzz. Join us for a look back at those stories and more with the Buzz Week in Review.

A cold one with the president
A few weeks ago, Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. was arrested at his own home by Cambridge police officer James Crowley. Gates, who is black, insisted that the arrest was racially motivated. Crowley, white, denied the charge. The arrest received such publicity that President Obama stepped in and suggested that the police had "acted stupidly" in arresting Gates. Obama later apologized for his remark, and to help smooth things over, he invited Gates and Crowley to the White House to drink a beer and talk. Unofficially known as the "beer summit," the afternoon get-together sparked tremendous searches on the key participants, as well as the various beer brands each person had chosen to drink. Crowley's choice (Blue Moon) drew the most searches, but Gates' pick (Red Stripe) also bubbled up. As for the president? No microbrews for him — he sipped on a Bud Light.

What the heck's a birther?
A birther is a person who doesn't believe that President Obama was born in the United States (and thus, not eligible to be the big boss). The birthing movement has taken Search by storm over the past several weeks, despite many feeling the community has few facts to stand on. This past week, the movement got hit with a jolt of cold, hard proof. In a 378-0 vote, Congress found that Obama was born in Hawaii. Still, a blogger from the Huffington Post writes that the movement won't likely go away any time soon. Searches on "birthers" were up 421% over the week, and related lookups on "where was obama born," "obama home state," and "obama birth conspiracy" also enjoyed some solid gains.

Cash for Clunkers out of gas?
When the Cash for Clunkers program got started, some wondered if it would actually inspire anyone to buy a new car. After all, the rules were pretty strict, and it stands to reason that anyone who owns an old jalopy probably wouldn't be able to afford a new car, anyway. How wrong those doubters were. After just a few days, the program was in danger of running out of funding. Congress, in a breath of fresh air, acted quickly and approved $2 billion in additional funding to keep the party going. Searches stayed strong on "cash for clunkers rules" and "cars.gov," the official government website that explains the program.

Also buzzing this week...
• Kevin Federline showed off his huskier physique.
• William Shatner recited a Palin-like poem on "The Tonight Show."
• Next season, Jon and Kate will date. Greaeeaaaat.

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by Claudine Zap

The sisters of the Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority have gone alpha on their president and want her removed. Their beef: Barbara McKinzie, while managing the sorority, was mismanaging the organization's funds.

The biggest affront: A wax statue of the president's likeness that a lawsuit claims set the sorority back a cool $900,000. We have to admit, having a wax statue commissioned of yourself does sound like something Dr. Evil would do, if Dr. Evil ran a sorority.

The besieged president fired back that the expense was way less, and anyway, covered two wax reproductions, not one. Either way, it's apparently not how sororitiy members want their money spent. Members also weren't too cool with Ms. McKinzie spending $400,000 on clothes, jewels, and lingerie.

Sorority members accuse their leader of not only going on a serious shopping spree with the club's funds, but cashing in on points racked up on the organization's credit card to get more goodies—a flat-screen TV and gym equipment.

By the way, this traditionally African American sorority has some serious history: Past members include Rosa Parks, Coretta Scott King, musician Alicia Keys, and actress Jada Pinkett Smith. Sure, but how many of them claim a wax statue?

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Ever since we assembled a 1.6 MW solar panel installation at our headquarters in Mountain View in 2007, we've been wondering, "Does cleaning the solar panels make them more effective?" We thought it might, but we needed to be sure. So we analyzed the mountains of data that we collect about the energy that these panels produce — after rain, after cleaning and at different times of the year.

We have two different sets of solar panels on our campus — completely flat ones installed on carports, and rooftop ones that are tilted.

Since the carport solar panels have no tilt, rain doesn't do a good job of rinsing off the dirt they collect. (Also, our carports are situated across from a sand field, which doesn't help the situation.) We cleaned these panels for the first time after they had been in operation for 15 months, and their energy output doubled overnight. When we cleaned them again eight months later, their output instantly increased by 36 percent. In fact, we found that cleaning these panels is the #1 way to maximize the energy they produce. As a result, we've added the carport solar panels to our spring cleaning checklist.

The rooftop solar panels are a different story. Our data indicates that rain does a sufficient job of cleaning the tilted solar panels. Some dirt does accumulate in the corners, but the resulting reduction in energy output is fairly small — and cleaning tilted panels does not significantly increase their energy production. So for now, we'll let Mother Nature take care of cleaning our rooftop panels.


We've also been crunching numbers on dollars-and-cents; the more energy our panels produce, the sooner we'll be paid back by our solar investment. Our analysis now predicts that Google's system will pay for itself in about six and a half years, which is even better than we initially expected.

If you want to learn more about our solar study, check out these slides showing the effects that seasonality, tilt, dirt, particulate matter, rain and cleaning have on Google's solar energy output. We hope you solar panel owners out there can tailor our analysis to the specifics of your own installation to produce some extra energy of your own!

Posted by Winnie Lam, Senior Product Manager

Posted by Hal Abelson, Visiting Faculty

At Google Research, we are making it easy to build mobile applications, and we're collaborating with faculty from a dozen colleges and universities to explore whether this could change the nature of introductory computing. With the support of Google University Relations, the faculty group will work together this fall to pilot courses where beginning students, including non-computer science majors, create Android applications that incorporate social networking, location awareness, and Web-based data collections.

Mobile applications are triggering a fundamental shift in the way people experience computing and use mobile phones. Ten years ago, people "went to the computer" to perform tasks and access the Internet, and they used a cell phone only to make calls. Today, smartphones let us carry computing with us, have become central to servicing our communication and information needs, and have made the web part of all that we do. Ten years ago, people's use of computing was largely dissociated from real life. With the ubiquity of social networking, online and offline life are becoming fused. This fall's exploration is motivated by the vision that open mobile platforms like Android can bring some of that same change to introductory Computer Science, to make it more about people and their interactions with others and with the world around them. It's a vision where young people—and everyone—can engage the world of mobile services and applications as creators, not just consumers. Through this work, we hope to do the following:

• Make mobile application development accessible to anyone.
• Enhance introductory learning experiences in computing through the vehicle of Android’s open platform.
• Encourage a community of faculty and students to share material and ideas for teaching and exploring.

The collaborative experiment kicked off with a three-day workshop at Google's Mountain View campus in June, where invited faculty shared their plans for the courses they will offer this fall. The group also got an advance look at App Inventor for Android, the prototype development platform that Google is working on and that the faculty and their students will use in their courses. App Inventor for Android lets people assemble Android applications by arranging "components" using a graphical drag-and-drop-interface. One of the goals of the fall experiment is to further shape the system in response to the experience and feedback of students and faculty.

The schools participating in this fall's collaboration are Ball State University, University of Colorado Boulder, Georgia Tech, Harvard, Indiana University, Mills College, MIT, Olin College, University of California at Berkeley, University of Michigan, University of Queensland, University of San Francisco, and Wellesley College.

Questions or comments? Please send us feedback. We look forward to hearing from you!

A few months ago when we announced the Search Options panel, we promised that you would soon see similar functionality across our other search properties. Today we are rolling out Search Options for Google Images.

This new feature offers quick access to existing tools, including search by color and image type. Color search will find images that are only in color or only in black and white, or even images that contain a specific color, such as red, pink, or green. Type search is a great way to narrow down your results if you are looking for a specific kind of image, such as a photo, clip art, line drawing or face.

We've also revamped our size search. In addition to choosing from commonly searched-for sizes, now you can search for an exact image size or any image larger than a certain size. You can find images of practically any size, including 70 megapixels or more.



The new layout makes it faster and easier to combine and toggle between options. It also makes it easier for us to add additional image search options in the future, so keep your eyes peeled. Just click "Show options..." in the blue bar on the search results page to try out any of these tools.

Posted by Ken Dauber, Software Engineer, and Nate Smith, Associate Product Manager

by Mike Krumboltz

Ostentations shows of wealth are out of fashion, but nobody told the designer of the Oculus super yacht. The $95 million vessel is worthy of the wealthiest James Bond villain and its sailing the high seas in Search.

What makes this obnoxiously fancy yacht different than all the other ones floating around? Well, for one, it's designed to look like a giant, friggin' whale. That's right, kids. Why voyage across the ocean in a boat that looks like a boat, when you can look like Shamu's sleaker brother. You can check out some killer pictures over at CNN.

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by Mike Krumboltz

New homes are full of questions and possibilities. What color to paint the walls? How to arrange the furniture? What to plant in the garden? The Obama family must have asked a lot of those same questions when they moved into the White House. However, the first lady's dreams of growing an organic vegetable garden have been dragged down by a previous resident that refuses to leave: sludge.

Various sources within the Buzz are reporting that Michelle Obama's "organic" garden has been besieged by icky goo in the ground. As a result, the veggies aren't quite what the first lady had in mind. According to Daily Finance, the National Park Service tested the soil in the vegetable patch and found "highly elevated levels of lead" due to sewage used as fertilizer.

So the question is: Who to blame? While dumping sewage into the ground sounds like a crime worthy of Mr. Burns from "The Simpsons," the actual perpetrators were none other than the Clintons. Yep, back when Bill and Hillary were living it up in the White House, their gardening team used "sewage sludge for fertilizer." The fiends! 

Sounds gross, but it's actually fairly common. However, it does mean that the highly touted "organic garden" will never "attain organic status." The certification process doesn't allow "the use of sludge as a fertilizer substitute." And there's another problem: If Malia and Sasha weren't into eating their veggies before, it's going to be that much harder to get 'em to eat 'em now.

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by Claudine Zap

Our top picks from the day's hottest searches.

1. Maine Lobster Festival (Searches increased by 1,247%). The crustacean is celebrated with cook-offs, a lobster-themed parade, and a crate race.
2. Jude Law (+297%). The British star is expecting his fourth child with model Samantha Burke.
3. "District 9" movie (+256%). An interview with Peter Jackson explains how the upcoming flick breaks the sci-fi mold.
4. X Games (+227%). The sports event that brought you competitive skate boarding and dirt-bike tricks is on.
5. "Curb Your Enthusiasm" (+158%). The cast of "Seinfeld" will reunite for the upcoming season of Larry David's off-beat show.

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Ah, Burlington, Vermont in late summer....can you do any better? The summer is winding down and the last quarter of the year is still a ways away and easily prepared for. All of France is on vacation. :-) The weather is just right on Lake Champlain. There's some time to get energized for the holiday season. It's a good chance to take a break, roll up your sleeves, learn some new skills and do some networking. And if online marketing and analysis is your field, there's no better time and place than Burlington this August to do it.

Join Google Seminar for Success leaders in Burlington from August 11 - 14 for an enriching and fun few days at their Seminars For Success Summit '09. Epikone, a Google Analytics Authorized Consultant, hosts this summit every year, and we've never heard a bad word about it. This year should be the best yet. Here's what to expect:

• Industry leaders from Google Analytics Authorized Consultants EpikOne and WebShare, AdWords Seminar Leader Anastasia Holdren, Analytics Evangelist Avinash Kaushik and others will cover in-depth training on Google's online marketing suite and dive into strategic insights at the thought leadership day.
• Daily workshops will cover all aspects of Google AdWords, Google Analytics and Website Optimizer along with special sessions on social marketing, mobile strategies and more.
• Plus each night you'll experience the best Vermont has to offer while socializing with peers, including brewery tours, lake cruises, shopping, sightseeing and more.

Did we mention brewery tours? Burlington was voted one of the best small cities in which to do business by "Inc. Magazine" and offers tons of outdoor activities for families. It'll be fun, but don't get us wrong - you will come away from this Summit with increased expertise and contacts that will do nothing but benefit you and your business.