Raising awareness for breast cancer throughout the Pink Pin scheme in NYC and beyond

Every October marks Breast Cancer Awareness Month, a time when organizations and persons around the world come together to raise awareness to support the fight against breast cancer.

This year, Google joined in and partnered with Susan G. Komen for the Cure on the Pink Pin scheme, which challenged local businesses in New York City to rally their customers, friends and families about breast cancer awareness. Using Google’s products, including Maps, YouTube, Picasa and Google+, we made it easy for local businesses and New York residents to show their support for the cause. On an interactive website, pinkpin.com, people might register their businesses on the Pink Pin Map, share their experiences by uploading their own videos and photo stories, as well as donate to Susan G. Komen for the Cure.

More than 300 businesses signed up to contribute in the first 24 hours, and we saw an outpouring of public support from both businesses and individuals, demonstrating how small, random acts of participation can interpret to larger scale impact. In fact, some businesses took it upon themselves to take Pink Pin a step further. One New York business offered $100 of free services for every $100 donated. A Brooklyn restaurant hosted a one-day “Dine-out” for Pink Pin, where a percentage of their earnings for that day went to Susan G. Komen for the Cure. Pink Pin was a wonderful demonstration of what people will do if you give them the tools to use technology for good. We’re delighted that Pink Pin has been so positively established by New Yorkers and hope to carry on and expand our efforts next year.

Googlers also celebrated Breast Cancer Awareness month in 23 of our offices about the globe. In addition to health talks encouraging Googlers to learn more about breast cancer prevention, we heard a panel of survivors speak in Mountain View, held walk/runs in California, New York and Washington, and participated in flash mobs to raise awareness in Dublin and London. On Wednesday, October 19, we renowned a global “Wear Pink, Think Pink Day.” We also encouraged donations (and gift matching!) to organizations like Susan G. Komen for the Cure and the Breast Cancer Research Foundation. You can see a photo album of all our activities below:

Blogger and Picasa Web Could Be Rebranded

Mashable reports that Blogger and Picasa Web Albums could change their names and become Google Blogs and Google Photos. "Google intends to leave several non-Google name brands and rename them as Google products. The move is part of a better effort to unify its brand for the public launch of Google+."

While Google Photos makes a lot sense, replacing Blogger with Google Blogs is not a great idea. When people say "Google Blogs", they refer to the long list of Google's business blogs. "Google Blogs" is previously used for Google Blog Search, but only on the homepage.

On the other hand, Blogger could be redesigned and use boundary elements from Google+, Blogger's profiles could be replaced by Google Profiles, the commenting system could be revamped and included with Google+.

One of the reasons why Picasa Web Albums didn't get improved too much is that it has always been perceived as Picasa's online extension. It wasn't a separate photo sharing service and many of its features required Picasa. You couldn't upload more than 5 photos, download albums or edit photos without installing Picasa. Google measured changing Picasa Web's name back in 2008.

Google's Lists of Related Searches

Google in progress to show a new universal search result with related queries. If you search for the name of a category, Google will list some of the most popular members of that category. For example, you can search for [German cars], [rock bands], [Indian food], [nuts], [clouds] and Google will show a list of items from that group. Google says that they are the top references for that question and it will also list three sources, without linking to the appropriate pages.

The feature is powered by Google Squared and it's not very new. Most of the results were available if you chosen "related searches" from the search options sidebar.

"Sometimes when you're searching, you're not just looking for one exact result, you may be looking for a list to start a series of searches. For example, if you search for [greek philosophers], many search results talk about well known philosophers like Plato or Aristotle. Typically, searches like these are the start of a research task, where you follow up by probing to learn more about each item in the list, in this case each philosopher," explains Google.

Just like the connected searches box, the "top references" box lets you try different queries without having to go back to the preceding page. If you click one of the connected searches, the box is moved at the top of the page and you can quickly sample the results for all the other items.

Google also in progress to show relevant lists for actors, movies, TV shows, music artists, writers, painters. For example, when you search for [Picasso], Google shows a list of famous Picasso paintings and small thumbnails. Searching for a movie or a TV shows brings a list of actors, searching for a singer shows a list of albums, while typing the name of a writer proceeds a list of popular books.

Google Squared, Google Q&A, "best guess" results and linked searches are just the tip of the iceberg. Google uses its huge index of pages from the Web to take out information, find facts and correlations, create lists and hierarchies, understand the meaning of a query and produce complex answers. At the recent Inside Search event, Alan Eustace said that his title distorted from "Senior VP of Search" to "Senior VP of Knowledge" because search is too limiting and Google's goals are much broader. They "go beyond the association of information to understanding and facilitating the formation of knowledge".

Add Multiple Google Profile Photos

The new Google Profiles border lets you upload multiple profile photos and button between them with a simple click. Visitors can see all the photos you've uploaded, so you must be cautious when you replace a profile photo. It's not enough to click "change photo" and upload the latest image: you should also click on the image and delete the preceding profile photo.

Profile photos are stored in a Picasa Web album, just like the photos from the Scrapbook section. The main dissimilarity is that profile photos can be cropped or shortened in Picnik.

If you previously have a Google Profile, it's a superior idea to upload a new profile photo. The new border uses bigger photos, so your old avatar looks pixelated.

Picasa Web's New Homepage

Picasa Web's homepage has been redesigned to highlight the photos recently uploaded by the people you're following. The homepage no longer displays all your albums, so you'll only be able to see the most fresh 8 albums.

"This new design centers around photos that are attractive to you. We wanted to give you faster access to the newest photos from your family and friends along with some great photos from the gifted Picasa community. When you log in to Picasa Web Albums, you will not only see your own albums, but albums that have been common with you, the latest public albums from people you follow, and featured photos from the Picasa community right on your home page," explains Google's Ping Chen.

While "recent activity" has always been a section on the homepage, now you can no ignore it. YouTube's homepage has lately switched to a feed view, a stream of actions popularized by Facebook.

If you don't like the new homepage, bookmark this URL: https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/myphotos or click "My Photos" when visiting the homepage.

Upload Picasa People Photos to Google Contacts

Picasa 3.8 makes it easier to upload pictures for your Google contacts. After scanning all the photos from your library and adding name tags to your photos, you can go to the Tools menu, select Upload and click on Upload People Thumbnails.

Picasa asks if "you want to upload and replace all the thumbnail photos from your People Albums to your Google Contacts". If you click on "Upload", Picasa saves the photos to Google Contacts and you can see them in Gmail or in any other application that synchronizes with Google Contacts (for example, Android's Contacts app or iPhone's Contacts app, if you use Google Sync).

If you don't want to upload photos for all your contacts, you can click on one of the people from Picasa's sidebar, right on a photo and select "Set as Google Contacts Thumbnail". You can also enable "Upload people album thumbnails to Google Contacts" from Tools/Options/Name Tags (or Picasa/Preferences/Name Tags on a Mac) to upload the new thumbnails you select in Picasa.

It's strange to see that Google didn't add this option to Picasa Web Albums and that the photos tagged in Picasa Web Albums aren't displayed in the Google Contacts. Google could at least offer the option to pick one of the photos tagged in the Picasa Web Albums when you add a picture to one of your contacts. Right now, you can only select a photo from your public albums.