Archive for August, 2010

by Claudine Zap

Brace yourselves: Prep is back. Prepare to put on that frayed Polo shirt, don the duck boots and grab your L.L. Bean tote. But instead of "The Official Preppy Handbook" to guide you, there's the new, updated version: "True Prep: It's a Whole New Old World."

The author, Lisa Birnbach, has waited 30 years since her last publication on prepdom to teach the latest generation about the ways of the preppie. This time around, WASPs (White Anglo Saxon Protestants) do not rule.

The new millenium prep is way more inclusive than the old prep. Michelle and Barack Obama are, after all, preps. At least according to the new book. So are the movie director M. Night Shyamalan and New York deli king Eli Zabar (both prep school grads). Who knew that Stephen Colbert, (yes, that Stephen Colbert) went to the preppiest college in the country, Hampden-Sydney. That might explain his uniform of Brooks Brothers suits.

What's new since 1980? One big update: The introduction of synthetic fleece to the prepster's wardrobe. (Think Patagonia.) The old handbook was all about natural fibers (usually with little critters printed on them). Also, brands like Tory Burch and J. Crew, which didn't exist back in the '80s, are featured this time around.

Relax, fans of the old prep: The classics are still included, like Lacoste, Sperry Top-Siders, and Ralph Lauren. And probably can be dug out of a deep closet. (In fact, the chapter on fashion is called "I Just Found It in My Closet.")

Prep etiquette is also refreshed for the new realities: How to remarry, dress for a funeral, when to text (not at the table).

Speaking of new technology, preps-in-training are hitting the Web to look up the new, old look. Searches on "true prep" skipped up Yahoo! with a 400% one-day increase. Lookups for "preppy handbook," "preppy clothing," and that "preppy look" also shot up.

In case you don't quite appreciate what's old as new again: The original preppy handbook, which went for $4.95 back in the 1980s can be had — new — for upwards of $149. Muffy would be proud.

You can check out a behind-the-scene video of the making of "True Prep" fashion chapter here.

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Just in time for our eleventh birthday, we are excited to introduce Stats for Blogger. First launched to Blogger in Draft back in July, Blogger Stats is a cool real-time stats service that's fully integrated with Blogger; you don't need to do anything to enable it for your blog. You can find the new Stats tab on your blog’s dashboard—go ahead and take it for a spin!

(Cross-posted from the Gmail Blog)

People tell us all the time that they’re getting more and more mail and often feel overwhelmed by it all. We know what you mean—here at Google we run on email. Our inboxes are slammed with hundreds, sometimes thousands of messages a day—mail from colleagues, from lists, about appointments and automated mail that’s often not important. It’s time-consuming to figure out what needs to be read and what needs a reply. Today, we’re happy to introduce Priority Inbox (in beta)—an experimental new way of taking on information overload in Gmail.

Gmail has always been pretty good at filtering junk mail into the “spam” folder. But today, in addition to spam, people get a lot of mail that isn't outright junk but isn't very important—bologna, or “bacn.” So we've evolved Gmail's filter to address this problem and extended it to not only classify outright spam, but also to help users separate this "bologna" from the important stuff. In a way, Priority Inbox is like your personal assistant, helping you focus on the messages that matter without requiring you to set up complex rules.



Priority Inbox splits your inbox into three sections: “Important and unread,” “Starred” and “Everything else”:



As messages come in, Gmail automatically flags some of them as important. Gmail uses a variety of signals to predict which messages are important, including the people you email most (if you email Bob a lot, a message from Bob is probably important) and which messages you open and reply to (these are likely more important than the ones you skip over). And as you use Gmail, it will get better at categorizing messages for you. You can help it get better by clicking the or buttons at the top of the inbox to correctly mark a conversation as important or not important. (You can even set up filters to always mark certain things important or unimportant, or rearrange and customize the three inbox sections.)

After lots of internal testing here at Google, as well as with Gmail and Google Apps users at home and at work, we’re ready for more people to try it out. Priority Inbox will be rolling out to all Gmail users, including those of you who use Google Apps, over the next week or so. Once you see the "New! Priority Inbox" link in the top right corner of your Gmail account (or the new Priority Inbox tab in Gmail Settings), take a look.

Posted by Doug Aberdeen, Software Engineer

Information overload is a reality of the modern workplace. The average corporate worker sends and receives more than 150 messages per day¹, an email deluge of varying importance: key project updates from colleagues, requests from higher-ups, appointment reminders, and automated mail that’s often much less important. With so much information to process, simply figuring out what needs to be be read and what needs a reply takes up a lot of time. Today, we’re excited to introduce Priority Inbox Beta in Gmail, an experimental new way of reducing information overload.

Priority Inbox is a new view of your inbox that automatically helps you focus on your most important messages. Gmail has always kept spam messages out of your inbox, and now we’ve improved Gmail’s filter to help you see the emails that matter faster without requiring you to set up complex rules.



Here’s how it works: Priority Inbox splits your inbox into three sections: “Important and unread,” “Starred,” and “Everything else”:



Messages are automatically categorized as they arrive in your inbox. Gmail uses a variety of signals to predict which messages are important, including the people you email most and which messages you open and reply to (these are likely more important than the ones you skip over). And as you use Gmail, it will get better. You can improve the ranking in Priority Inbox by clicking the buttons at the top of the inbox to mark conversations as important or not important.

As a result, your inbox is better organized, and you can spend your time addressing your most important emails right away. When we tested Priority Inbox at Google, we found that people spent 6% less time on email after enabling this feature. This translates to a week’s worth of time saved each year for information workers who typically spend 13 hours per week on email today!²

Luke Leonhard, Web Services Manager for Brady Corporation, says “Like many of our users, I get over a hundred messages each day. Priority Inbox saves me time by displaying emails in order of importance, letting me process them more efficiently than before. The time I save can then be spent on new projects that add value to Brady rather than managing my inbox.”

Over the next week, we’ll be rolling out Priority Inbox settings to users in organizations with the “Enable pre-release features” option selected in the Google Apps control panel.

Helping users manage lots of information has always been a core goal of Gmail, and we’re excited to see how Priority Inbox helps users in organizations mitigate information overload and get to important messages faster.

Posted by Doug Aberdeen, Software Engineer

1. “Email Statistics Report, 2009-2013”, The Radicati Group, Inc, 2009

2. “Hidden Costs of Information Work in the Enterprise Exposed in New IDC Progress Report”, IDC, 2009

Douglas Crockford’s latest installment in the “Crockford on JavaScript” series, a talk in which he covers the role of event loops and the importance of server-side JavaScript, is now available on video. Flash video is embedded below, or you can download the HD video (480p ~370MB). Video from the first five lectures is available on the Crockford on JavaScript page.

• Download HD video (480p ~370MB)
• Download video (m4v)
• Download slides

Other Recent YUI Theater Videos:

• Nicholas Zakas and Victor Tsaran: Accessibility on the Yahoo Homepage — Nicholas Zakas, a principal developer of the Yahoo! homepage, and Victor Tsaran’s, Yahoo!’s senior accessibility manager, discuss the strategies and methods that made one of the most visited websites in the world fully accessible. The talk took place at the June 2010 BayJax meetup at Yahoo.
• Dennis Lembree: Making JavaScript Accessible — Dennis Lembree, an accessibility expert and the creator of AccessibleTwitter discusses the challenges of making JS-enabled sites accessible. The talk took place at the June 2010 BayJax meetup at Yahoo.
• Ryan Dahl: Introduction to NodeJS — Ryan Dahl, the creator of NodeJS, introduces the project and talks about performance improvements and new architecture. The talk took place at the May 2010 BayJax meetup at Yahoo.
• Elijah Insua: jsdom: a CommonJS Implementation of the DOM — Elijah Insua introduces a server-side implementation of the JavaScript DOM at the May 2010 BayJax meetup at Yahoo.
• Nicholas Zakas, Stoyan Stefanov, Ross Harmes, Julien Lecomte, Matt Sweeney: High Performance JavaScript — Five contributors to O’Reilly’s High Performance JavaScript discuss advanced JavaScript and DOM scripting optimizations at the April 2010 BayJax meetup at Yahoo.

Subscribing to YUI Theater:

• YUI Theater RSS feed
• YUI Theater on iTunes

Today, you may have noticed a brighter looking Google Translate. We’re currently rolling out several changes globally to our look and feel that should make translating text, webpages and documents on Google Translate even easier. These changes will be available globally within a couple of days.

Google Translate’s shiny new coat of paint

With today’s functional and visual changes we wanted to make it simpler for you to discover and make the most of Google Translate’s many features and integrations. For example, did you know that you can search across languages on Google using Google Translate? Or that you can translate incoming email in Gmail or take Google Translate with you on your phone? We’ve added all these tips on the new Do more with Google Translate page. You can also see some of these tips rotating on the new homepage.

We’ve also created an Inside Google Translate page, where you can learn how we create our translations. Is it the work of magic elves or learned linguists? Here Anton Andryeyev, an engineer on our team, gives you the inside scoop:



It’s always inspiring for us to learn how Google Translate enables people to break down communication barriers around the world. Lisa J. recently shared with us how she uses Google Translate to stay in touch with her grandparents. “I moved to the U.S. from China when I was six,” Lisa told us, “so I speak both English and Chinese fluently but I’m not very good at reading the complex Chinese alphabet.” When she gets an email from her grandparents in China, Google Translate helps her understand the sentences she can’t quite read. She also uses Google Translate when she’s writing her response. “I use Google Translate to make sure I’m using the right character in the right place,” she explained.

Do you use Google Translate to stay in touch with distant relatives? Read foreign news? Or make the most of your vacation? We’d love to hear from you, and invite you to share your story with us. Who knows, we might feature your story on the Google Translate blog!

Posted by Awaneesh Verma, Product Manager

by Mike Krumboltz

Hurricane Earl and Tropical Storm Fiona have some people worried. Web searches on "hurricane earl tracker" have soared an astounding 1,505% in the past 24 hours. Related lookups on "hurricane earl path" are up 408% and "hurricane earl forecast" searches have spiked 725%.

Clearly, people are concerned that they might be in the storm's path. Fortunately, there are a variety of online resources to help folks follow the hurricane, monitor its strength, and prepare for any worst-case scenarios. 

Follow its path
The Weather Channel offers constant updates, and an easy-to-read map on Earl's projected path. Keep in mind that this is subject to change, so check back often.

The National Weather Service, a government-run site, is another excellent resource. As on Weather.com, the maps here are updated as quickly as news warrants. Visitors can also check out the glossary of disaster terms if, for example, they want to know the difference between a hurricane and a typhoon.

Monitor its strength
It's hard to beat the National Weather Service here. The site lists hurricane wind speed probabilities for up to 120 hours out. There is also a chart of probable maximum one-minute wind speeds.

Want a closer look at Earl's strength and path? Stormpulse offers larger, and perhaps easier-to-follow, maps. 

Be prepared
In the several days since Earl became a very real threat to those on the East Coast, Web searches on "hurricane preparedness" have soared nearly 200%. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) offers tips and guidelines on what to do before, during, and after a hurricane.

FEMA.gov also hosts a section on how to prevent hurricanes from causing excessive damage to your property. And the agency has a handy chart on how to respond in the event of an evacuation.

Rule number one: Keep a full tank of gas in your car if you think a hurricane is likely. Gas stations shut down during storms.

How hurricanes are named
Hurricanes are given regular-sounding names so they'll be easy for people to identify and follow. FEMA explains that "the World Meteorological Organization uses six lists in rotation. The same lists are reused every six years." When a storm is particularly deadly, as was the case with 2005's Katrina, the name is retired. Katia replaced Katrina.

For a list of all the possible hurricane names for both the Atlantic and North Pacific, check out the National Hurricane Center.

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As part of the GWT team's ongoing effort to address the needs of the Maven community, the Google Plugin for Eclipse (GPE) team is working to improve interoperability with Maven in future releases. Plugin version 1.3.3 makes it possible to use Maven in a GPE project with a little tweaking, and future versions aim to improve this experience. There is already good support from the open source community for using Maven with GWT and/or App Engine projects; however, it has been difficult to enable both Maven and GPE for the same project. This article explains how to do that. It assumes you already have some Maven knowledge.

Working with GWT and GAE in Maven

First, here are a few tips on using Maven with GWT and GAE.

The open source community has written Maven plugins for both GWT and App Engine which wrap the native development tools for these platforms.

• maven-gae-plugin provides Maven goals to run, debug, deploy, and rollback a GAE application as well as a handful of utility goals. In addition, the plugin automatically retrieves all GAE runtime dependencies from the plugin's SVN repo (Google is working on publishing these dependencies to the central Maven repo, as well).
• gwt-maven-plugin from codehaus.org provides Maven goals to compile GWT applications, and run or debug in hosted mode using the dev mode console.

Both projects provide Maven archetypes to generate a pom.xml and project skeleton. In addition, you can find a GWT+GAE+Roo sample POM within the Expenses sample project in GWT trunk. It contains everything you need to build a GWT 2.1 app (as of 2.1.0 M3) with Spring Roo and deploy to App Engine. If you're not using Spring, you can remove the Spring dependencies.

The documentation for each plugin lists all of the Maven goals available, but we'll briefly look at the most common:

• mvn gae:run starts the App Engine development server.
• mvn gae:deploy deploys your application to App Engine.
• mvn gwt:run runs your GWT app in hosted mode using the standalone dev mode console. If you're using maven-gae-plugin, it will also invoke gae:run.
• mvn gwt:debug runs your GWT app in hosted mode and additionally enables the debugger port hook so you can debug in Eclipse as a Remote Java Application on the standard debugger port (8000). It is generally easier, however, to launch the debugger within Eclipse using GPE. We'll look at how to enable that shortly.
• mvn gwt:compile compiles your GWT app for production.
• mvn eclipse:eclipse creates an Eclipse project that you can import into Eclipse. The sample POM referenced above contains configuration for the maven-eclipse-plugin which adds the gwt and gae project natures used by Google Plugin for Eclipse. After you run Maven eclipse:eclipse, you can import your project into Eclipse using File | Import | Project | Existing Project.

Using the goals provided by the GWT and GAE Maven plugins, it is not necessary to use the Google Plugin for Eclipse at all, as you can use Maven instead to run / debug / deploy. However, GPE provides tighter integration with Eclipse Run / Debug launch, code completion, warnings and errors, etc., so it's useful to enable it also.

Enabling Google Plugin for Eclipse to work with an existing Maven project

If you have an existing Maven project in Eclipse and want to enable GPE functionality, follow these steps:

1. In Eclipse, open your project's properties (Alt+Enter or right-click, Properties)
2. Under Google | App Engine, select the version of the App Engine SDK you're using. GPE is not yet able to use the version defined in your Maven POM, so you may need to download your SDK version using the Eclipse software updater (see http://code.google.com/eclipse/docs/download.html)
3. Under Google | Web Toolkit, likewise select the version of the GWT SDK you're using. As with the App Engine SDK, install it via the Eclipse plugin update site if needed.
4. Under Google | Web Application, check the "This project has a WAR directory" box and point it to your project's src/main/webapp directory. This is the standard WAR source folder for Maven Web projects. Be sure that the "Launch and deploy from this directory" box is NOT checked.
5. Under Java Build Path, select the Order and Export tab and move all Maven dependencies to the BOTTOM. Otherwise, GPE will see the App Engine and GWT SDKs from the Maven repo on the build path and complain that they are not valid. This is because GPE expects a specific SDK structure used to enable other tooling.
6. Also under Java Build Path, select the Source tab and ensure that the Build output directory is enabled and pointing to target/your-project-name/WEB-INF/classes. If you created the project with mvn eclipse:eclipse, this should be done for you automatically.
7. Finally, and this is very important, the first time you launch your project using Run As | Web Application (or Debug), you will be prompted to select the war directly. This is NOT src/main/webapp, but rather the WAR output folder, which is target/your-project-name. If you make a mistake, simply go to Run | Run Configurations... and remove any old configurations for the project. GPE will then ask you again next time you try to Run As | Web Application.

Mavenizing an existing GPE project

To use Maven with an existing GPE project, follow these steps:

1. Create a pom.xml using one of the project archetypes or sample POM discussed above. Make sure it contains configuration for gwt-maven-plugin, maven-eclipse-plugin, and maven-gae-plugin (if you're using App Engine).
2. Maven projects use a different layout than the default GPE project, so create folders for your Java code (src/main/java) and static resources (src/main/webapp).
3. Move all source files under the GPE-created war directory into src/main/webapp. These include any config files (web.xml, etc.) under war/WEB-INF and static resources such as images and CSS. After you've moved the source files, you can delete the war directory, as Maven will create output folders for your GWT modules under the target directory, not the war directory.
4. Add Maven dependencies in your pom.xml for each jar that had been in WEB-INF/lib.
5. Run mvn clean gae:unpack war:war in the pom.xml directory. This will unzip the App Engine SDK in your local maven repo and copy static resources from src/main/webapp into target/project-name, where GPE expects to find them when configured as above.
6. Run mvn eclipse:clean eclipse:eclipse in the project directory to recreate your Eclipse project file, then Refresh it in Eclipse (select project and press F5 or right-click, Refresh).
7. Follow the steps in the previous section to enable GPE support with Maven.

Let me conclude with a hearty thank you to everyone who has contributed to the development of maven-gae-plugin and gwt-maven-plugin. Your contributions are an indispensable part of Google's ability to better meet the needs of the Maven community.

Accessible ads for the sight- and/or hearing-impaired? Yes, Yahoo! is at it again. The Accessibility team — working with Yahoo!'s designers, developers, engineers, and product managers across the globe — continues to gradually incorporate more accessibility in our network. According to Victor Tsaran, one of Yahoo!'s resident accessibility team members, ads are slowly being made accessible to both sight- and hearing-impaired users.

For the sight-impaired user, accessible display ads need to have descriptive Alt text or off-screen text added to the code. These users browse the internet with special screen reader software, which reads the content of a page aloud to them.

When Alt text is added to an advertisement, the ad will be read by the screen reader, just like the content on the page is read. This is relatively simple and can be done quite quickly (and at virtually no cost). However, the complications arise around the advertisers deciding how they want their advertisements described. And this iterative process can take time, which isn't always available.

Note: This video starts off the way a sight-impaired user would experience the ad, so the screen is black but you can hear the ad being described. After several seconds, the display will appear.

To make ads with audio accessible for hearing-impaired users, captions need to be added so users can read what is on the audio track. Captions can be open (the captions always display) or closed (the captions can be turned on or off).

The cost for open or closed captioning varies, depending on the ad being adapted and the vendor used. National Center for Accessible Media (NCAM) is a media services agency — a subsidiary of a nonprofit organization — that is our long-time partner and can help advertisers with this adaptation:

Meanwhile, here are some recent relevant blog posts you may enjoy reading:

• Yahoo! and People with Disabilities
• Real Impact of the Americans with Disabilities Act by Kareem Dale of the White House Office of Public Engagement
• I Can Do It Myself!
• DisabilityLand

Victor Tsaran
Sr Accessibility Program Manager