Archive for September, 2009

Today, we're launching a new web search feature that will help you stay in touch with the latest trends on the web.

You might already be familiar with Hot Trends, which lists the fastest rising searches on the web at any given hour. Now, when you search Google.com and your query matches one of the top 100 fastest-rising search terms, we'll show you a graph at the bottom of page, with more information — like how popular the query is, how fast it's rising over time, and other useful data.

Below is a picture of what you'd find today if you searched for [reina capodici], who just wed American Idol star Justin Guarini. Or try another example: [gotthard base tunnel], which is set to become the longest tunnel in the world. (But make sure you search for these examples today — nothing stays hot for long.)

by Brett Michael Dykes, Yahoo! News Blog

Last week Barack and Michelle Obama hosted a reception for visiting foreign dignitaries at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art. Over the course of the evening, the president, whose "amazingly consistent" smile created a viral video, and first lady posed for over 130 photographs with their guests, all of which were later posted to the State Department's Flickr page.

This caused a problem: Included was a shot of the Obamas posing with Spanish Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, his wife Sonsoles Espinosa, and two daughters, Laura, 16, and Alba, 13, who've never had photographs of themselves published previously in print or online due to a Spanish law prohibiting the media from doing so. The photo of Zapatero and his family with the Obamas was quickly removed from Flickr at the request of the Spanish government but still lurks online (in the shot seen here their faces are blurred). The flap is adding concerns on the issue of the privacy of world leaders' children in the digital age.

Writing on The Daily Beast today, Republican Senator John McCain's daughter Meghan expressed sympathy for the girls, who've been labeled as "goth" in the photo. She says she's also bewildered by the Spanish government's reaction:

I want to start out by saying I can't believe there is a country that exists where the media protects children of public figures, let alone the prime minister's daughters. It is literally hard for me to fathom that there is a place that respects the privacy of underage children of politicians and diplomats. The second part of this that makes me very sad is that these two girls are enduring a sort of baptism by fire with the media scrutiny that surrounds their family portrait with the Obamas. Not only are they not used to being photographed, but their first foray into being photographed and criticized is on a very public scale with the most famous and powerful politicians in the entire world.

In addition to successfully lobbying the State Department to remove the photo, the Spanish government went so far as to have the state-owned Spanish news agency EFE refrain from distributing it.

The plethora of ridicule faced by Prime Minister Zapatero's children is a reminder of the harsh scrutiny children of world leaders often face over their appearance. Here in the U.S., Chelsea Clinton, who was so closely protected that Time Magazine referred to her as "the Garbo of presidential children," was dealt a harsh review by conservative commentator Rush Limbaugh during her father's presidency, in addition to being called "ugly" in an off-color joke told by none other than Meghan McCain's father at a Republican fundraiser in 1998. The Bush twins Jenna and Barbara were famously ridiculed for - and photographed - partying with friends.

The Spanish government's policy toward Zapatero's children contrasts with the tricky relationship between the U.S. media and first daughters, Malia, 10, and Sasha, 8, who have been largely sheltered from the press but certainly haven't been invisible. Back in June, photographers were allowed to photograph the president walking to get ice cream with his girls on Father's Day weekend, not long after the White House requested that the press not publish a photo of Obama waving to Sasha as she stood on one of the White House balconies. Meanwhile, the official White House Flickr page contains numerous "behind the scenes" pictures of the Obama children.

White House press secretary Robert Gibbs recently said that the administration would permit press access to the Obama children when they are part of "official events with the president and first lady," but added that "there should be a wide berth of privacy extended to the family" when they're alone or doing something as a family. He added that the White House's Flickr photos of the children exist to control the paparazzi market for pictures of the Obama children, the youngest to occupy the White House since John and Caroline Kennedy, who were also fiercely guarded.

Sheltering their children is forcing modern world leaders to deal with challenges most of their predecessors never had to contend with: digital technology and the Internet. The influx of digital cameras and cell phones and the rise of social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook, Myspace, etc. make it easy for anyone to take a photograph and distribute it widely in a matter of minutes, making it virtually impossible for even the highest levels of government to keep the genie in the bottle.

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by Mike Krumboltz

Some actors are embarrassed by the shows that made them famous. Others embrace them. Melissa Gilbert definitely falls into the second category. The actor who became a star in "Little House on the Prairie" is now appearing in a stage adaptation of the hit show. But with a unique twist...

Gilbert, who played the young Laura Ingalls during the TV show's run from 1974 to 1983, is starring as "Ma" in the stage version. News that Gilbert is back in pioneer-era garb inspired huge searches on the actress. Web lookups on "melissa gilbert" and "melissa gilbert play" each posted triple-digit gains.

The fact that Gilbert is playing a different character shouldn't come as a huge surprise. After all, it would really stretch the audience's suspension of disbelief to ask a 45-year-old to play a teenager (apologies to Luke Perry). What came as a surprise to us, as well as to Ms. Gilbert, is that the stage adaptation is a musical. The New York Post reports that Gilbert's initial response to the news was: "Are you crazy?"

Still, the actor has grown confident with the new material. She's even abstained from giving too much advice to Kara Lindsay, who has taken on Gilbert's old role. Reviews of the production appear to be mixed. The New York Times calls it "pretty and well-meaning, but a little too sincere." Meanwhile NJ.com calls it "a lyrical, likeable journey," but also says the musical is "wholesome without being emotionally moving." Reviews aren't everything, however — the show is already sold out.

Fans who can’t get to the Paper Mill Playhouse might just have to wait and hope it moves to Broadway. Hey, stranger things have happened. Remember Cats?

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As interns on the Google Docs team this past summer, we were excited to be able to work on making Google Docs that much more useful for students like us. We've now added a bunch of back to school features which should help our fellow students make the transition from summer to school that much easier — and we hope they'll be useful to you non-students as well!

We created an equation editor so you can easily complete problem sets online or write papers that include equations. If you're taking math, you can now take notes in class or answer questions using Google Docs.

by Claudine Zap

Our top picks from the day's hottest searches.

1. Roman Polanski (Searches increased by 11,124%). The ex-pat director vowed to fight extradition from Switzerland. He was arrested there on a 30-year-old arrest warrant for statutory rape.
2. "SNL" F bomb (+696%). Newbie castmember Jenny Slate made a rookie mistake in the season opener. Contrary to the rumors, "SNL" says they won't be dropping her for dropping the "F" word.
3. Yom Kippur 2009 dates (+678%). The Jewish Day of Atonement ends at nightfall.
4. Weekend box office (+304%). The animated children's flick "Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs" made mincemeat of the Bruce Willis vehicle "Surrogates."
5. Ken Burns' national parks series (+295%). The filmmaker has focused his high-brow lens on the national parks system for a 12-hour series airing on public television.

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So the first Free T-shirt Friday (#FTF) was a moderate success.  Why moderate, you ask?  Apparently we didn’t really spell out the ‘how you enter’ very well. 

A couple of notes for this week:

1) Giving me a query phrase like “Halloween” doesn’t really count.  Giving me a query phrase as part of a query (like this) that you’ve checked out and like the results (image, video, core web, etc) – this is good.

2) Make sure you hashtag it with #FTF – I saw a few that weren’t and I’m not good enough with the Twitter to grep thru all the tweets to find the best queries.

All that said, since my rules were so opaque, we’ll still give out the Bing stuff to the following people:

· My favorite: jillkocher @bing #FTF [raking orange fall leaves] - Bing Images http://bit.ly/3UVxE9 TGIF

· dzandman @bing "Falling" in love, of course! http://bit.ly/sByvt  #ftf

· BingFan @bing #FTF Halloween Candy http://bit.ly/3X9MbT

· Zeppyster @bing candle making basics (http://bit.ly/FdQxQ) #FTF

· wiiteacher @bing FTF fall pagan festival –halloween

· meerkat1o1 @bing #FTF college football

· Talverion @bing autumnal color change #FTF

· tannawings @bing #FTF Harvesting and preserving garden vegetables , preparing garden for winter

Congrats to all the winners – we’ll DM you to get your deets.  Keep on Bing-ing on.

Stefan

Have you ever wanted to create a form that changes which questions to show next based on an answer received earlier in the form? The two features we launched today make that easy.

First, we've added one of the most requested features for forms: page breaks. Now it is easy to create a form with multiple pages by going to "Add item" and selecting "Page break."
Posted by Dan Ferrara and Jackie Tsay, Bold Practicum Interns, Google Apps team

Get timely updates on new features in Google Apps by subscribing to our RSS feed or email alerts.

In partnership with the Google Chrome Frame team, we are making available a library to allow your web application to detect the presence of Google Chrome Frame. We on the Ajax team are excited about the possibilities of this add-on improving JavaScript performance and enabling some of the new features available in HTML5. If you have a web application which makes use of these new features, you can use this library to prompt the user to install Google Chrome Frame, or recognize when a user has just installed it. The library provides granular controls so that you can create the user experience which best suits your site.

As a short example, I've created the following simple demo which just detects whether Google Chrome Frame is installed or not with an alternate message if you are in a browser for which this plugin is not available.

Ben Lisbakken has also added detection for Google Chrome Frame to the Ajax Playground. If you view source on the page you can see another example of a customized CFInstall.check implementation which is designed to fit the page.

For more details on the Google Chrome Frame Ajax API, see the documentation and for questions, please visit the discussion group.