Friday 31 October 2008

More of Jessica's Ink: Halloween Post


I have featured a lot of Jessica's work before. The previous post here will link you back to earlier posts.

This seemed an appropriate piece for Halloween. It is on the other side of the leg that features Beetlejuice holding a pumpkin. You can see the pumpkin in the photo.

The image is of a child in a ghost costume holding a rock and a paper sack. It's based on a scene from "It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown". A bunch of kids are comparing their goodies and Charlie reaches into his bag and sadly proclaims "I got a rock."


Happy Halloween everyone! And thanks to Jessica for sharing her ink!!

Here's a little "I got a rock" bonus:

A picture of a thousand words?

(Note: Click on the first result in each of the search results pages linked to throughout the post to see this feature in action.)

A scanner is a wonderful tool. Every day, people all over the world post scanned documents online -- everything from official government reports to obscure academic papers. These files usually contain images of text, rather than the text themselves.But all of these documents have one thing in common: someone somewhere thought they were they were valuable enough to share with the world.

In the past, scanned documents were rarely included in search results as we couldn't be sure of their content. We had occasional clues from references to the document-- so you might get a search result with a title but no snippet highlighting your query. Today, that changes. We are now able to perform OCR on any scanned documents that we find stored in Adobe's PDF format. This Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technology lets us convert a picture (of a thousand words) into a thousand words -- words that can be searched and indexed, so that these valuable documents are more easily found. This is a small but important step forward in our mission of making all the world's information accessible and useful.

While we've indexed documents saved as PDFs for some time now, scanned documents are a lot more difficult for a computer to read. Scanning is the reverse of printing. Printing turns digital words into text on paper, while scanning makes a digital picture of the physical paper (and text) so you can store and view it on a computer. The scanned picture of the text is not quite the same as the original digital words, however -- it is a picture of the printed words. Often you can see telltale signs: the ring of a coffee cup, ink smudges, or even fold creases in the pages.

To people reading these documents, the distinction between words and pictures of words makes little difference, but for a computer the picture is almost unintelligible. Consider a circle. Should it be read it as a zero, the letter 'O', just a circle, or the ring from my coffee cup? People learn to answer this kind of question very quickly, but for the computer it is a painstaking and error-prone process.

To see our new system at work, click on these search queries. Note the document excerpt in the search results, along with the full text presented after the 'View as HTML' link:

[repairing aluminum wiring]
[spin lock performance]
[Mumps and Severe Neutropenia]
[Steady success in a volatile world]

What we learned from 1 million businesses in the cloud

The reliability of cloud computing has been a hot topic recently, partly because glitches in the cloud don't happen behind closed doors as with traditional on-premises solutions for businesses. Instead, when a small number of cloud computing users have problems, it makes headlines. As with most things at Google, we are fanatical about measuring the availability of Gmail, and we thought it best to simply share our reliability metrics, which we measure as average uptime per user based on server-side error rates. We think this reliability metric lets you do a true side-by-side comparison with other solutions.

We measure every server request for every user, every moment of every day. Any millisecond delay is logged. Over the last year, Gmail has been available more than 99.9 percent of the time — for everyone, both consumers and business users. The vast majority of people using Gmail have seen few issues, experienced no downtime, and have continued to have a great Gmail experience, with exception of an outage in August 2008. If you average all these data together, including the August outage, across the entire Gmail service, there has been an aggregate 10-15 minutes of downtime per month over the last year of providing the service. That 10-15 minutes per month average represents small delays of a couple of seconds here and there. A very small number of people have unfortunately been subject to some disruption of service that affected them for a few minutes or a few hours. For those users, we are very sorry. And for Google Apps Premier Edition customers, we have extended service level agreement credits to them.

So how does greater than 99.9 percent reliability compare to more conventional approaches for business email? We asked some experts. Naturally, the normal caveats apply for on-premises solutions, since each individual business environment will vary, depending on server reliability, staff response time, and actual maintenance schedules for each application.

According to the research firm Radicati Group, companies with on-premises email solutions averaged from 30 to 60 minutes of unscheduled downtime and an additional 36 to 90 minutes of planned downtime per month.1

Looking just at the unplanned outages that catch IT staffs by surprise, these results suggest Gmail is twice as reliable as a Novell GroupWise solution, and four times more reliable than a Microsoft Exchange-based solution that companies must maintain themselves. And higher reliability translates to higher employee productivity. Gmail's reliability jumps to more than four times as reliable as a GroupWise solution and 10 times more reliable than an Exchange-based solution if you factor in the planned outages inherent in on-premises messaging platforms. But this isn't the only way Google Apps helps businesses do more with their resources. Compared to the costs of Microsoft Exchange, IBM Lotus or Novell GroupWise — including software licensing, server expenses and the labor associated with deploying, maintaining and upgrading them on a regular basis — Google Apps leaves companies with much more time and money to focus on their real business.

We are now extending what we've learned from Gmail to the other applications in Google Apps.

Today, we're announcing that we will extend the 99.9 percent service level agreement we offer Premier Edition customers on Gmail to Google Calendar, Google Docs, Google Sites, and Google Talk. We have been delivering high levels of reliability across all these products, so it makes sense to extend our guarantees to them.

More than 1 million businesses have selected Google Apps to run their business, and tens of millions of people use Gmail every day. With this type of adoption, a disruption of any size — even a minor one affecting fewer than 0.003% of Google Apps Premier Edition users, like the one a few weeks ago — attracts a disproportional amount of attention. We've made a series of commitments to improve our communications with customers during any outages, and we have an unwavering commitment to make all issues visible and transparent through our open user groups.

Google is one of the 1 million businesses that run on Google Apps, and any service interruption affects our users and our business; our engineers are also some of our most demanding customers. We understand the importance of delivering on the cloud's promise of greater security, reliability and capability at lower cost. We are hugely thankful to our customers who drive us to become better every day.

1. The Radicati Group, 2008. "Corporate IT Survey – Messaging & Collaboration, 2008-2009"

Thursday 30 October 2008

The latest on Google Apps for Education

It was exactly two years ago at the EDUCAUSE conference that we first announced our free Google Apps offering for educational institutions. We've kept pretty busy in that time, working closely with thousands of schools to reach 2.5 million students, staff, and faculty actively using Google Apps on campuses across the globe. As part of this mission, we also recently drove our eco-friendly bus (think bio-fuel and solar panels) to universities across the country to hear directly from people using Google Apps. Here's what some of them had to say:



One thing hasn't changed in the last two years: Google Apps still offers academic institutions, from neighborhood schools to international universities, free integrated solutions for email, calendaring, and online document and site sharing. We're glad to be back at EDUCAUSE this week in Orlando to reminisce about how far technology in education has come since 2006, and to look forward toward even more possibilities for innovation.

If you're involved in education, check out Google Apps to see if it can help make your school a more effective learning community. And if you're a student, visit the newly launched Google for Students Blog to find Google-related information relevant to you.

Charlie Honors The Birth of His Youngest Son


A cold and dreary day drove me underground on Tuesday, as I spent some of my lunch hour inkspotting, and meeting some new tattoos.

Since it was Tat-Tuesday, it only seemed fitting that I met a father and son, Amtrakking from Florida up to Boston, who had four tattoos apiece.

I met Charlie first, who had a tiger on his forearm. However, he offered up this piece on his right bicep instead:


As a parent with child-inspired ink, I certainly appreciated this tattoo which honors the birth of his youngest son, Derry.

He wanted to do a tribute, but didn't want to do a portrait, which is a popular method for doing so. Instead, he went for the footprints, name and birth date.

Whereas a portrait is a snapshot in time, footprints and/or hand prints are a record of your child's beginning, and a literal imprint of part of their flesh on one's own. There's something remarkable about the historical record contained therein, like the door jamb in the family home that displays the height-marks of the child, growing over the years.

This piece was inked by "Old School" at AK's N Chevrolets in Hollywood, Florida.


I can't find an active link for the shop, and it appears as it was renamed Almost Famous 2 Tattoos (not to be confused with Almost Famous Tattoos in Miami).

Check back in the coming days to see the tattoo offered up by Charlie's older son Jason, that ties in to this piece as well.

Thanks to Charlie for sharing his little piece of family history here on Tattoosday!

Voting tools for volunteers on the go

(Cross-posted from the Google Mobile Blog)

With the U.S. elections less than a week away, voting drives are ramping up. Political parties and non-partisan groups alike are sending out volunteers to encourage citizens to vote on November 4. To make sure these volunteers have the same voter info tools available to them on their phone as on their computer, we've now launched a mobile voting locator tool on m.google.com/elections. (Click here to send this to your phone.)


Now, volunteers can type in the home address of any registered voter and find his or her voting location, whether they're in an office making phone calls, working from a booth set up outdoors, or going door to door. While on the go, they can use Google Maps for mobile to find their next address or display directions to voting locations.


Of course, between talking to potential voters, volunteers can check out the Elections section in Google News for mobile for the latest updates (go here on your phone), or just search for a nearby coffee shop to stay warm.

Video your vote on Election Day

If you've been paying even passing attention to the 2008 election, you know that without a doubt this is the most documented election in history. On YouTube, average citizens have posted millions of videos chronicling their experiences and opinions about the 2008 election. Never before has the campaign trail been sliced, diced, clipped, mashed-up, and exposed in so many ways — and never before have voters been the ones in control of the content.

The YouTube team is shining a spotlight on election documentation with the Video Your Vote program. In partnership with PBS, we're asking you to submit videos of your voting experiences to the Video Your Vote channel. The idea is simple: we want this to be the most transparent election day in history, so that the world can see — through the eyes of voters — just how the election transpired.

This is important because not only will there be more people voting in this election than ever before, but there undoubtedly will be bumps along the way: long lines, broken machines, confusion over the registration process, and even voter intimidation and fraud are all unfortunate election realities. Video can help document where problems occur in a more compelling and concrete way than other media. By documenting your voting experience, you can help make this a more transparent election.

On the Video Your Vote channel, PBS's program The News Hour with Jim Lehrer is providing educational information about voting in America, with a particular nod to election reform issues. You can also learn what the laws of your state say (or don't say) about bringing a video camera to the polls (in most states, it's okay to document your own experience respectfully). Learn more in this call-out video that correspondent Judy Woodruff made (it's on the YouTube homepage):



With hundreds of thousands of voters casting their ballots before Election Day, we're already seeing videos coming in. From excitement from first-time voters to videos of long lines at the polling places or touch-screen problems in the field, voters are already documenting their experiences. Join them to video your vote!

Wednesday 29 October 2008

Eight candles for Google Toolbar

Google recently celebrated its 10th birthday. As we participated in the festivities, we realized that we are coming upon another birthday: In just a few weeks, our very own Google Toolbar will be turning 8 years old. To celebrate, we wanted to take a few moments to reflect on its evolution over the past few years and how we've tried to make the web a better place for the hundreds of millions of people who use Toolbar.

Back in 1999, the Internet was a very different place. At that time, you had to fight annoying pop-up ads that would randomly appear as you navigated from one page to another. You had to fill in endless forms with your personal information in order to create accounts for websites you wanted to use. And when you wanted to find information on your airline's luggage policy, you spent more time finding the right search terms to get you there than actually packing for your trip. The Toolbar team was formed to develop tools to make your web experience better, so we created features like pop-up blocker and AutoFill. We also built a dynamic search box that automatically guesses what you're typing and offers search suggestions in real time (click on the image to see larger).


Over the years, we've been proud to see several of the features we've pioneered integrated into web browsers as well as other websites. We're encouraged by this progress, but this doesn't mean that our mission is complete. We're still working hard to make the time you spend on the web more enjoyable and productive. On that note, we'd like to announce our latest release of Google Toolbar for Internet Explorer, now launching out of beta and available in 40 languages.

Here are just a few things you can do with this latest version:
- Add gadgets to your Toolbar to bring content from your favorite websites closer to you
- Synchronize your settings online to access your Toolbar from wherever you are
- Create multiple profiles in AutoFill to keep your business and personal information separate

To learn more about the different features, visit us at toolbar.google.com/features. We'd also love to hear your feature ideas and other Toolbar feedback, so send us a quick note with your thoughts.

Mengajarkan Gizi Pada Anak Dengan Cara Menyenangkan

Senang sekali ikut terlibat di dalam proyek buku ini. Sebuah buku yang baik untuk bahan bacaan anak-anak agar mengerti akan makanan sehat dan bergizi sejak usia dini.

Membekali anak pengetahuan gizi sejak dini sangat baik untuk kehidupan anak di masa yang akan datang. Dengan pengetahuan gizi yang baik, seseorang dapat tumbuh sehat dan berkembang dengan optimal.

Produsen makanan sehat, PT Japfa Comfeed Indonesia Tbk bekerjasama dengan PT Gramedia Widiasarana Indonesia (GRASINDO). Menerbitkan buku berjudul 4 Sehat 5 Sempurna. Sebagai bentuk kepedulian PT Japfa terhadap pengetahuan gizi anak di Indonesia. Buku ini diharapkan dapat memenuhi kebutuhan anak akan pengetahuan dasar tentang makanan sehat serta ilmu gizi.

Saya turut berbangga hati karena dipercaya sebagai penulis cerita di dalam buku 4 Sehat 5 Sempurna. Buku ini sangat menarik dibaca anak karena dibuat dengan alur cerita bergambar. Tidak menggurui namun sarat akan ilmu.

Bagi Anda yang ingin membekali anak akan pengetahuan makanan sehat. Buku ini sudah bisa Anda miliki dan bisa di dapatkan pada jaringan toko buku Gramedia.


Judul:

4 Sehat 5 Sempurna

Penulis Cerita:

Budi Sutomo

Penerbit:

PT Grasindo

Harga:

Rp. 20.000

Catatan:

Buku bisa di dapatkan pada seluruh jaringan toko buku Gramedia

Tuesday 28 October 2008

New steps to protect free expression and privacy around the world

In a world where governments all too often censor what their citizens can see and do on the Internet, Google has from the start promoted global free expression and taken the lead in being transparent with our users. We've pressed governments around the world to stop limiting free speech and made it possible for dissidents, bloggers and others to have their voices heard.

As part of those ongoing efforts to promote free expression and protect our users' privacy, today we're announcing Google's participation as a founding company member of a new program called the Global Network Initiative.

This initiative is the result of two years of discussions with other leading technology companies, human rights organizations, socially responsible investors and academic institutions. Thanks to hard work and cooperation from all parties, the Initiative sets the kinds of standards and practices that all companies and groups should use when governments threaten internationally recognized rights to free expression and privacy.

The Global Network Initiative also offers an important commitment from all parties to take action together to promote free expression and protect privacy in the use of all information and communication technologies. We know that common action by these diverse groups is more likely to bring about change in government policies than the efforts of any one company or group acting alone.

Companies that join the Initiative commit to putting into effect procedures that will protect their users by:

  • Evaluating against international standards government requests to censor content or access user information
  • Providing greater transparency
  • Assessing human rights risks when entering new markets or introducing new products
  • Instituting employee training and oversight programs

These are things that Google does now, but joining the Initiative will help us refine our methods and maintain our leadership position. Down the road companies will be assessed on how they're doing in implementing the principles and the Initiative will report those results.

This Initiative is by no means a silver bullet or the last word, but it does represent a concrete step toward promoting freedom of expression and protecting users' privacy in the 60th anniversary year of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Now we're actively recruiting more companies and groups to join the Initiative and advance these critical human rights around the world.

Take a Vote Hour

In less than two weeks, every vote will count as Americans decide who will become the next U.S. president. During the last national election in 2004, 20 percent of registered voters who didn't make it to the polls said that they were "too busy" or had conflicting work schedules (2004 U.S. Census).

The Vote Hour is an independent, bipartisan effort among CEOs across America to publicly announce their support for employees to step away from their desks and take an hour to cast a ballot. Just a few of those leaders appear in the video below, encouraging their employees to take a Vote Hour on November 4th.



We hope more business leaders across the country will join the movement, add their names and their encouragement to the effort. Employees can send emails to their bosses to encourage them to participate as well.

So spread the word to your friends, families and colleagues to take a Vote Hour. And most importantly, don't forget to vote yourself. It's the most important job you have on Election Day.

New chapter for Google Book Search

Google was built on the principle of making the world's information more accessible and useful. Before the company was even founded, Larry and Sergey imagined a way to make it easier for anyone, anywhere, to access the information held within the world's books. Search simply isn't complete without that content, and providing more access to more books is a vision Google has never lost sight of.

Four years ago, almost to the date, we first announced Google Book Search. Since we launched the service, we've heard countless stories about Book Search helping readers all over the world find books in over 100 languages on topics as diverse as The Physics of Star Trek and the history of Wood Carvings in English Churches. We've seen millions of people click to buy books or find them in a library, and more than 20,000 publishers have joined our Partner Program to allow readers to preview the books they find before buying them.

While we've made tremendous progress with Book Search, today we've announced an agreement with a broad class of authors and publishers and with our library partners that advances Larry's and Sergey's original dream in ways Google never could have done alone.

This agreement is truly groundbreaking in three ways. First, it will give readers digital access to millions of in-copyright books; second, it will create a new market for authors and publishers to sell their works; and third, it will further the efforts of our library partners to preserve and maintain their collections while making books more accessible to students, readers and academic researchers.

The agreement also resolves lawsuits that were brought against Google in 2005 by a group of authors and publishers, along with the Authors Guild and Association of American Publishers (AAP). While Google, the Authors Guild and the AAP have disagreed on copyright law, we have always agreed about the importance of creating new ways for users to find books and for authors and publishers to get paid for their works.

To date, Google has worked with libraries all over the world to make more than 7 million books searchable through Google Book Search, and we're just getting started. We believe that ultimately we'll provide access to many times that number, and if approved, this agreement will unlock access to millions of these texts and make the Google search experience even more comprehensive.

With this agreement, in-copyright, out-of-print books will now be available for readers in the U.S. to search, preview and buy online -- something that was simply unavailable to date. Most of these books are difficult, if not impossible, to find. They are not sold through bookstores or held on most library shelves, yet they make up the vast majority of books in existence. Today, Google only shows snippets of text from the books where we don't have copyright holder permission. This agreement enables people to preview up to 20% of the book.

What makes this settlement so powerful is that in addition to being able to find and preview books more easily, users will also be able to read them. And when people read them, authors and publishers of in-copyright works will be compensated. If a reader in the U.S. finds an in-copyright book through Google Book Search, he or she will be able to pay to see the entire book online. Also, academic, library, corporate and government organizations will be able to purchase institutional subscriptions to make these books available to their members. For out-of-print books that in most cases do not have a commercial market, this opens a new revenue opportunity that didn't exist before.

It's important to note this agreement doesn't change our Partner Program, which currently includes more than 20,000 publishers around the world, but it does add a new way for those publishers to sell access to their works. For in-print books not in our Partner Program, we'll continue to scan these books through our Library Project and make them full-text searchable, but we won't show any portion of the book. As for books in the public domain, this agreement doesn't change how we display them: We'll make out-of-copyright works freely available on Google Book Search for people to read and download.

As part of the agreement, Google is also funding the establishment of a Book Rights Registry, managed by authors and publishers, that will work to locate and represent copyright holders. We think the Registry will help address the "orphan" works problem for books in the U.S., making it easier for people who want to use older books. Since the Book Rights Registry will also be responsible for distributing the money Google collects to authors and publishers, there will be a strong incentive for rightsholders to come forward and claim their works.

In addition to expanding the commercial market for these books, Google, the authors and the publishers have worked hard with our library partners at Stanford, the University of Michigan, the University of California and the University of Wisconsin-Madison to ensure this agreement advances libraries' efforts to preserve, maintain and provide access to books for students, researchers and readers. The agreement gives public and university libraries across the U.S. free, full-text viewing of books at a designated computer in each of their facilities. That means local libraries across the U.S. will be able to offer their patrons access to the incredible collections of our library partners -- a huge benefit to the public.

The agreement also authorizes Google and the libraries to create new services that will help people with disabilities such as visual impairment better experience these books. We are grateful to our library partners for investing so much painstaking effort over so many years to maintain their book collections, and we are excited at the prospect of their participation in this landmark project.

Because the agreement is the result of a U.S. lawsuit, all of these services will be available to readers who access Google Book Search in the United States. Outside the U.S., the user experience with Google Book Search will be the same as it is today. In other words, people will be able to search the full text of books and may see snippets of in-copyright works, but they will not be able to preview or purchase access to books online, unless these services are authorized by the rightsholder of a book. It is important to note that the agreement does not affect users outside the U.S., but it will affect copyright holders worldwide because they can register their works and receive compensation for them. While this agreement only concerns books scanned in the U.S., Google is committed to working with rightsholders, governments, and relevant institutions to bring the same opportunities to users, authors, and publishers in other countries.

As you can imagine, we're all ready to get moving, but this project will take some time. First and foremost, the settlement administrator will be reaching out to educate authors and publishers worldwide about the agreement and their rights under it. The agreement also must be approved by the court. Once it's approved, we'll be ready to begin delivering these services. In the meantime, if you own or think you may own a U.S. copyright interest, there is more information about the agreement at this website. And Google Book Search users can find more information here.

Update @ 7:55 AM: Updated the press release link in the 3rd paragraph.

Hemorrhage: Ryan's Derek Hess Piece is Bloody Awesome


I technically didn't meet Ryan, but he did respond to a flier I passed out. I gave it to his girlfriend, we're guessing around 34th Street in Manhattan, she passed it to him, and he e-mailed me the following photo:


Initially, all he told me was "It's a Derek Hess piece. It's my blood around it in the ... photo. It was done by Nick [Males] @ Silk City Tattoos".

Of course, I know inquiring minds would want to know more, so I asked him for more specifics.

"It's a piece of art that Derek Hess did [it's entitled "Hemorrhage"].
I have the print on my wall in my room, among others by him...this is just my favorite one. My girlfriend was getting her garter done on her leg and I had asked [Nick] if he could do it. He said yeah, so when she went for her second sitting, I got mine done. I think it took about 3 hours, theres a lot of detail in it. The black didn't hurt much but the blood was the worst part, non-stop pain with little to no breaks. A lot of fun."
Work by Nick at Silk City Tattoo has appeared on the blog previously here.

Thanks to Ryan for sharing his body art here with us on Tattoosday!

Traveling by zip-line

It's no secret that we have fun finding innovative solutions to big problems. Recently, some fellow software engineers and I applied this to a couple of extracurricular activities.

In mid-August, Google moved into a new building in Mountain View, just west of our main campus in Mountain View, CA. Unfortunately, dinner was only available on main campus, just beyond Permanente Creek. Here's a map to help you visualize.

A few people joked about building a zip-line as a shortcut to cross the creek. One Friday afternoon our friend Doug said, "Hey, I just bought a cable to make a zip-line. Want to help?" By Saturday, we had one up and running.


In true Google fashion, we followed the "launch early and iterate" philosophy. The zip-line started with a single pulley traveling across the cable. We knew two pulleys would be faster, so Seth built a custom bracket to hold them together. Eventually, we upgraded to a professional trolley with harder wheels and ball bearings. After someone fell off the zip-line into the rather foul creek (don't worry, he's fine), we added grippy tape to the handlebar.

As we got better at running the zip-line, it became the normal way to cross the creek. Some of our friends still hadn't worked up the nerve to try it, though, and they insisted upon walking along Charleston Road instead. So Doug and I decided to build a bridge so that everyone could stay together. Here's the blueprint we came up with (alligator and piranhas not to scale):


The goal was to give people an easier way to cross — but not be so easy that they would stop using the zip-line altogether. Sure enough, those who worked up the nerve to try the bridge were met with a narrow, wobbly bucking beast. Like the zip-line, we improved the bridge incrementally. A week later, it had been tamed, and we were excited to show everyone.

But when we got in on Monday, we found that the bridge and zip-line were both gone: the city of Mountain View asked that it be taken down. Well, it was fun while it lasted, and for a few weeks Googlers had a faster and more exciting way to cross Permanente Creek. More importantly, it's great to know that we work at a company that lets us live out our rascally dreams.

Here are more pictures featuring the work of the entire G-Zip team (Seth LaForge, James Lyons, Vincent Mo, Doug Ricket, Michael Schultz):



Monday 27 October 2008

Introducing Google Earth for iPhone

Even before we introduced Google Earth back in 2005, the team had long dreamed of being able to carry the Earth around in your pocket. Well, today that dream becomes a reality as we introduce Google Earth for iPhone and iPod touch. With just a swipe of your finger you can fly from Peoria to Paris to Papua New Guinea, or anywhere in between. It may be small, but it brings all the power of Google Earth to the palm of your hand, including all of the same global imagery and 3D terrain. You can even browse any of our 8 million Panoramio photos or read Wikipedia articles.

With Google Earth for iPhone, you can:
• Tilt your iPhone to adjust your view to see mountainous terrain
• View the Panoramio layer and browse the millions of geo-located photos from around the world
• View geo-located Wikipedia articles
• Use the 'Location' feature to fly to your current location
• Search for cities, places and business around the globe with Google Local Search

It's available today in 18 languages and 22 countries in the iTunes App Store. To learn more, check out this video tour and read the blog post on the Lat Long Blog.



Menampilkan / Pasang Emoticon di Kotak Komentar

Dengan adanya emoticon di kotak komentar tentunya akan membuat blog menjadi lebih hidup. Para komentator menjadi lebih bisa mengekspresikan perasaannya melalui icon2 (emoticon). Kalau di wordpress mungkin feature ini sudah tersedia. Tapi untuk blogspot kita harus mengotak-atik dan mengakalinya supaya bisa menampilkan emoticon di area komentar. Gimana? kamu mau memasang emoticon ini?

Seperti biasanya, di trik ini akan diberikan dua macam emoticon, yaitu emoticon kucing (seperti punyaku ini) dan emoticon yahoo. Kamu tinggal pilih mana yang kamu suka.

Emoticon Yahoo :



Emoticon Kucing :



Gini nih cara membuatnya :

1. Pertama login ke blogger, trus ke "Layout (Tataletak) --> Edit HTML "
2. Beri tanda centang pada kotak "expand widget template"
3. Lalu letakkan script berikut sebelum kode </body>

Untuk Emoticon Yahoo :

<script src='http://kendhin.890m.com/emoticon/smile1.js' type='text/javascript'/>


Untuk Emoticon Kucing :

<script src='http://kendhin.890m.com/emoticon/smile2.js' type='text/javascript'/>



4. Kemudian cari kode berikut ini :

<p class='comment-footer'>
<b:if cond='data:post.embedCommentForm'>
<b:include data='post' name='comment-form'/>
<b:else/>
<b:if cond='data:post.allowComments'>
<a expr:href='data:post.addCommentUrl' expr:onclick='data:post.addCommentOnclick'><data:postCommentMsg/></a>
</b:if>
</b:if>
</p>



5. Kalo sudah ketemu letakkan kode2 berikut setelah kode <p class='comment-footer'>

Ini untuk Yahoo emoticon :

<b><img border='0' src='http://us.i1.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/i/mesg/emoticons7/21.gif'/>
:))
<img border='0' src='http://us.i1.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/i/mesg/emoticons7/100.gif'/>
:)]
<img border='0' src='http://us.i1.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/i/mesg/emoticons7/71.gif'/>
;))
<img border='0' src='http://us.i1.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/i/mesg/emoticons7/5.gif'/>
;;)
<img border='0' src='http://us.i1.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/i/mesg/emoticons7/4.gif'/>
:D
<img border='0' src='http://us.i1.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/i/mesg/emoticons7/3.gif'/>
;)
<img border='0' src='http://us.i1.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/i/mesg/emoticons7/10.gif'/>
:p
<img border='0' src='http://us.i1.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/i/mesg/emoticons7/20.gif'/>
:((
<img border='0' src='http://us.i1.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/i/mesg/emoticons7/1.gif'/>
:)
<img border='0' src='http://us.i1.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/i/mesg/emoticons7/2.gif'/>
:(
<img border='0' src='http://us.i1.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/i/mesg/emoticons7/8.gif'/>
:X
<img border='0' src='http://us.i1.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/i/mesg/emoticons7/12.gif'/>
=((
<img border='0' src='http://us.i1.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/i/mesg/emoticons7/13.gif'/>
:-o
<img border='0' src='http://us.i1.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/i/mesg/emoticons7/7.gif'/>
:-/
<img border='0' src='http://us.i1.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/i/mesg/emoticons7/11.gif'/>
:-*
<img border='0' src='http://us.i1.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/i/mesg/emoticons7/22.gif'/>
:|
<img border='0' src='http://us.i1.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/i/mesg/emoticons7/35.gif'/>
8-}
<img border='0' src='http://us.i1.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/i/mesg/emoticons7/102.gif'/>
~x(
<img border='0' src='http://us.i1.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/i/mesg/emoticons7/104.gif'/>
:-t
<img border='0' src='http://us.i1.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/i/mesg/emoticons7/66.gif'/>
b-(
<img border='0' src='http://us.i1.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/i/mesg/emoticons7/62.gif'/>
:-L
<img border='0' src='http://us.i1.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/i/mesg/emoticons7/14.gif'/>
x(
<img border='0' src='http://us.i1.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/i/mesg/emoticons7/24.gif'/>
=))
</b>



Kalo mo yang emoticon kucing pake yang ini :


<b><img border='0' src='http://kendhin.890m.com/emoticon/capek.gif'/>
:f
<img border='0' src='http://kendhin.890m.com/emoticon/bigsmile.gif'/>
:D
<img border='0' src='http://kendhin.890m.com/emoticon/hi.gif'/>
:)
<img border='0' src='http://kendhin.890m.com/emoticon/kagum.gif'/>
;;)
<img border='0' src='http://kendhin.890m.com/emoticon/love.gif'/>
:x
<img border='0' src='http://kendhin.890m.com/emoticon/malu.gif'/>
:$
<img border='0' src='http://kendhin.890m.com/emoticon/marah.gif'/>
x(
<img border='0' src='http://kendhin.890m.com/emoticon/bingung.gif'/>
:?
</b>
<br/>
<b>
<img border='0' src='http://kendhin.890m.com/emoticon/mumet.gif'/>
:@
<img border='0' src='http://kendhin.890m.com/emoticon/muntah.gif'/>
:~
<img border='0' src='http://kendhin.890m.com/emoticon/mentok.gif'/>
:|
<img border='0' src='http://kendhin.890m.com/emoticon/ngakak.gif'/>
:))
<img border='0' src='http://kendhin.890m.com/emoticon/sedih.gif'/>
:(
<img border='0' src='http://kendhin.890m.com/emoticon/senang.gif'/>
:s
<img border='0' src='http://kendhin.890m.com/emoticon/tolong.gif'/>
:((
<img border='0' src='http://kendhin.890m.com/emoticon/wow.gif'/>
:o </b>


6. Kalo sudah trus di "save" dan coba lihat hasilnya

Tambahan
* Kadang-kadang ada beberapa template memiliki kode yang beda. Kalau caranya sudah dilaksanakan dengan benar tapi hasilnya tidak terjadi apa2 atau kodenya tidak berubah menjadi emoticon, kemungkinan itu karena Kode untuk templatenya berbeda atau bisa juga karena mugnkin hosting untuk menaruh file emoticon dan javascriptnya sedang bermasalah.