Bringing the very best of what we do to the veteran community

We consider that technology can be a force for good; one that builds and binds community. As a Googler, my proudest moments are when we take that technology and put it in the hands of people who can use it to communicate, collaborate, build and explore.

Today, on Veterans Day, I am conceited to share a few Google tools and platforms for the military veteran community. They can be accessed on our website, Google for Veterans and Families, which was created by veterans and their family and friends, who work at Google. This single border brings together Google products and platforms for service members and their families. We believe it will be useful to all veterans, whether still in the service, transitioning out, or on a new path in their civilian lives. Here are some examples of what you’ll find on the site:

* Vet Connect - This tool helps service members connect, communicate and share their experiences with others who have served using the Google+ platform.

* Google Veterans Channel - A YouTube channel for discussion concerning military service for veterans, their families and the public. Veterans can share their experiences with each other as well as with civilians to help shed light on the significance and complexity of service. If you have not served, this is a great place to offer your thanks by uploading a compliment video.

* Resume Builder powered by Google Docs - We originate that Docs can be a particularly helpful tool to transitioning service members seeking employment. Resume Builder generates an auto-formatted resume that can be simply edited, saved and downloaded to share with potential employers.

* Tour Builder powered by Google Earth (coming soon). A new way to tell your military story, Today, you can view some sample “tours”— 3D maps of veterans’ service histories, complete with photos and videos. Stay tuned for more facts and updates on the Google Lat Long Blog.

It’s been a proud month for those of us here at Google who are veterans or family of veterans.

In October, 100 Googlers visited the Soldier and Family Assistance Center at West Point to conduct resume writing workshops for members of the Warrior Transition Unit. And, just two weeks ago, we traveled to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center to teach wounded, ill and injured service members how to use Google tools to continue in touch with their loved ones while in recovery.

Finally, this week, we introduced the Veterans Job Bank in partnership with the Department of Veterans Affairs. The Veterans Job Bank is a modified job search engine in the National Resource Directory (NRD), which is powered by Google Custom Search technology and crawls the web for Job Posting markup from Schema.org to recognize veteran-committed job openings.

Even playing a little part to serve those who have served has been an honor.

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:

A convenience survey for blind users

These days, we rely on the Internet to keep us knowledgeable and in touch, yet our experience of the web is filtered through the tools we use to access it. The devices and technologies we choose, and our decisions about when we improve those tools, can affect how we interrelate with the web and with whom we are able to communicate.

In July, I attended the yearly conference held by the American Council of the Blind (ACB). I was struck by something I heard from people there: their experience using the web was very dissimilar from mine not because they were blind, but because the technology and web tools obtainable to them were unlike the ones available to me, as a sighted person. While the Internet provides many benefits to modern society, it has also created a exclusive set of challenges for blind and low-vision users who rely on assistive technologies to use the web. We’re committed to making Google’s products more accessible, and we believe the best way to understand the convenience needs of our users is to listen to them.

This week, we’re announcing a review that will help us better understand computer usage and assistive technology patterns in the blind community. Over the past three months, we’ve worked intimately with the ACB to develop a survey that would give us a greater understanding of how people choose and learn about the assistive technologies they use. This survey will help us design products and tools that interact more efficiently with assistive technologies currently available to the blind community, as well as improve our aptitude to educate users about new features in our own assistive technologies, such as ChromeVox and TalkBack.

The survey will be obtainable through mid-September on the ACB's website and by phone. We encourage anyone with a visual impairment who relies on assistive technologies to participate; your input will help us offer products that can enhanced suit your needs. For details, visit www.acb.org/googlesurvey.

Google Toolbar for Firefox Has Been Discontinued

Another Google product bites the dust. This time it's a well-liked add-on: Google Toolbar for Firefox. Many users were surprised to see that Google hasn't rationalized the toolbar for Firefox 5, even though it wasn't a difficult task. After enabling the Add-on Compatibility Reporter, most of the features worked well in Firefox 5.

It turns out that Google no longer wants to modernize Google Toolbar for Firefox, but it doesn't admit that the product has been discontinued.

"Google Toolbar for Firefox is well-matched with Firefox version 4 or older. If you use Firefox version 5 or newer, you won't be talented to use Google Toolbar."

Google suggests a long list of add-ons that might replace Google Toolbar's features, but the suggestions are too generic. For example, Google links to the hunt results for [bookmarks sync] or [language translate] in the Firefox add-ons gallery.

A Google blog post offers an explanation: "many features that were once obtainable by Google Toolbar for Firefox are now already built right into the browser" and thanks the loyal users. That's also true for the IE toolbar, but there are many useful features that aren't built-in in the browser: auto-translation (a built-in Chrome feature), Google Bookmarks integration, using Google Docs to open documents, smart spell-checking using an online service, highlighting search terms, suggestions for navigation errors (another built-in Chrome feature), custom buttons and gadgets.

You almost certainly remember that Google Toolbar for Firefox was released in 2005, five years after the Internet Explorer version. At that time, Firefox users who wanted to put in a Google Toolbar with PageRank support could try an unofficial extension called Googlebar. Maybe that addition will be resurrected, now that Google Toolbar for Firefox is no longer available. Releasing some of the source code under an open-source license would be helpful.

For now, Google Toolbar still works in the latest Firefox releases if you put in the Add-on Compatibility Reporter first and restart the browser. Here's Google Toolbar in Firefox 7 Alpha 2 (Aurora):

A New Look for Google Translate

Google Translate is the newest Google service with a new plan based on Google+. Since Google Translate's interface is simple, there aren't many changes: a new grey header, updated buttons and drop-downs.

"We're working on a project to bring you a new and enhanced Google experience, and over the next few months, you'll carry on to see more updates to our look and feel. The way people use and experience the web is developing, and our goal is to give you a more seamless and reliable online experience—one that works no matter which Google product you're using or what device you're using it on," explained Google last month.

After launching a new border for Google Search, Google created two themes that preview Gmail's new design and ongoing to test Google Calendar's new UI and Blogger's new UI. Up next: Google Docs, Google Sites, Picasa Web Albums, Google Reader and almost certainly other services.

What Do You Love?

A while back, a few of us required to make a little tool that we could use to show just about anybody more of what Google makes. That led to some simple ideas, and then a few more ideas and eventually, to a challenge: how we could attach people to products they might not know about and may find useful, but make the discovery applicable to them and keep it fun.

Playing about with that challenge shaped a website—What Do You Love?—that we hope meets at least some of the challenge by demonstrating how dissimilar Google products can show you different things about any particular search query. Like always, you’re the judge, so give it a go. Type in something that you love—polar bears, space travel, pickup trucks, Lady Gaga, early Foghat—whatever strikes your fancy (for some reason, the results for cheese always crack us up, so try that if you’re briefly stumped). No matter what it is, we’ll give you back impressive that will let you get even more into what you love.

The Google+ Bar

A page from the Google+ help center explains the reason of the new Google navigation bar:

The Google+ bar, which appears at the top of Google products, is your connection to Google+. You can share what's on your mind, view your Google+ notifications, access your profile, or jump to a range of other Google products. For case, to get to Google+, all you have to do is click +[your first name].

When you're signed in and look at the Google+ bar, you'll see your full name or email address displayed with a photo or avatar next to it. This helps you recognize which account you're now signed in to. You can sign in to numerous accounts at once and switch between them using the Google+ bar.

One of the most attractive feature of the bar is notifications:

When you receive a notification, the notification area in the Google+ bar will turn red and show the figure of new notifications. If you click the notification area in the Google+ bar, you’ll see a synopsis of your recent notifications. When you click a notification, a preview of the event that generated the notification will emerge in the drop-down menu. You can take action on each notification right from the notifications menu, like commenting on a post or adding up someone to a circle.

The navigation bar has been morphed into the Google+ bar and it ought to be more useful. Maybe at some point the bar will take in notifications for Gmail, Calendar, Google Docs and other Google services.

More “I do”s, less “to-do”s: wedding planning simplified

For many, your wedding day is one of the biggest, most important days of your life. The perfect dress, the right tuxedo, the correct shade of blue, the three-tier cake with chocolate fondant, and all of your closest family and friends—these are just a few of the many things you might think about for your special day. Although there’s much to believe and a lot of work to do, the payoff is great: it’s one of the happiest days of your life.

To help you plan this significant day we’ve created wedding-specific templates in Google Sites, Google Docs and Picnik, and gathered tips and tricks for using these and other Google products at google.com/weddings. From wedding websites to save-the-date cards, these tools make simpler wedding planning, letting you focus your time on the fun things—like tasting cakes!

We teamed up with famous wedding planner Michelle Rago, who provided her insight and originality to guide the designs you’ll find on this new site. Michelle also shared her experience to provide tips and suggestion to keep your guests comfortable and you sane.

We’re also hosting a wedding sweepstakes, so if you’re getting married in the next year you can enter for a chance to win $25,000 towards your dream wedding (see Official Rules). Plus, Michelle Rago and her team will counsel the winning couple on location, flowers, food and other design fundamentals to create a day that is exclusively their own.

Visit google.com/weddings to start planning, or share the site with your favorite engaged couple and help them on their way to wedded bliss.

Our big gift for small businesses

To kick off 2011, we wanted to thank a few small businesses for taking the first step toward enhancing their online presence—and to provide additional resources for achieving this goal. So over the holiday season, we paid a surprise visit to five small businesses who recently started advertising their businesses online: Create A Cook and Twinkle Star in Massachusetts, Ramy’s Garage and Atlas Flooring in Texas, and Cloud 9 Frozen Yogurt in Georgia. These small businesses span several industries, but their founders share one common goal: to expand beyond their brick-and-mortar storefronts and into the world of e-commerce.

To help, we gave them each of them $100,000 in AdWords spend for 2011 as well as free consultations with AdWords representatives. Because we know online presence means more than just AdWords, we’ll also be providing them with web consultations, wireless service for the year as well as a few other little surprises. See footage from our surprise visit below:

We’re looking forward to making big investments in small businesses far beyond these lucky five. Small businesses have long benefited from Google products and services; now our hope is that all small business owners can have greater access to the tools and training they need to develop a cohesive strategy for doing more business online. We started last year by creating the Google Small Business Center and asking small business owners about their biggest wishes for 2011. We received an overwhelming response from business owners who, like the owners of these shops, want to do more business in the clouds in 2011.

In the meantime, check the Google Small Business Blog for updates, and if you’re a business owner, visit the Google Small Business Center for information on how you can bring your business online in 2011.

Abandoned Knol

Knol's homepage says a lot about the present state of the project. There's a big empty part called "what's new", a single featured knol that has 1,000 views, while the "most discussed" part doesn't include any knol and the search characteristic no longer works properly.

Knol has been last rationalized in December 2009 and it's clear that the service has been abandoned. Somebody wants to close Knol before it's too late.

If you want to find a list of abandoned Google products, check the copyright notice at the base of their homepage and see if it's been updated. Friend Connect, Google Desktop and Knol still show an old message:.