The future is now

Posted by Alan Noble, Head of Engineering, Google Australia & New Zealand

The secret is out. Today, in an exclusive launch only for Australians, we're happy to announce gDay search technology, Google's newest innovation, developed right here in our Sydney R&D centre. Using a system called MATE (Machine Automated Temporal Extrapolation), gDay combines Google's index of historic, cached web content, and a mashup of numerous factors, including recurrence plots and fuzzy measure analysis, to create a sophisticated model of what the internet will look like 24 hours from now.

By clicking "one day in advance" on our homepage, you can search the internet exactly 24 hours in advance.

You heard that right. That's tomorrow's footy scores, tomorrow's celebrity goss, tomorrow's weather, even tomorrow's Google announcements - all right at your fingertips. Not to toot our own horn, but this is going to be a very, *very* big feature for Google Australia going forward.

Believe me, I checked.

Document Freedom Day, Sydney 2008

Posted by Gianni Mariani, Tech Lead/Manager

The first ever Document Freedom Day, hosted in Sydney last Wednesday by Google, the Internet Society of Australia and the Sydney Linux Users Group (SLUG) was a great success for all involved, as it raised awareness about the importance of open document standards. Guest speaker, Senator Kate Lundy, gave insights into how the new federal government is taking open standards initiatives very seriously. The Senator also actively engaged in Q&A time, providing a valuable look into how the government is changing, and the challenges it faces in dealing with information and communications technology.

Guest Speaker David Vaile, director of the UNSW Executive Director of the Cyberspace Law and Policy Centre, placed an emphasis on the growing complexity of copyright and patent licensing and the challenges faced by open standards. His discussion also touched on the trend of "cloud computing" and the social and security challenges faced as we look to the next wave of technological innovations. Q&A time was lively with fast succession of suggestions and comments.

Special thanks go to Senator Kate Lundy who was truly gracious and insightful, as well as to David Vaile, whose experience with open standards provided a valuable point of view. Also thanks to all that attended and participated in the valuable discussion and especially to the co-hosts ISOC-AU and SLUG.

And the winner is...

Matt Simpson, User Interface Designer

Not too long ago, I was in our Sydney office to meet the winners of the Build Your Campus in 3D Competition for Australia and New Zealand. I'm happy to report that the three winning teams were:

• The University of Western Australia: Schools of Computer Science & Physics | models
• The University of Melbourne: Department of Geomatics | models
• The University of Melbourne: IT (Faculty of Engineering) and Software Engineering, and Faculty of Architecture | models

You can check out all the competition entries in this collection in the 3D Warehouse.

As part of the prizewinners' event, each of the teams showed the great work they put into the modeling process. I gave them a rundown of what the Google SketchUp team does, what I do for the team, and the role of the User Experience group at Google in general. The winners also (hopefully) got some insight into what happens in our Sydney office. There was some time for play as well: we toured North Sydney, Manly and the rest of the city before we dined at The Rocks to celebrate the winners' achievements.

Interested in modeling your own campus? This year's Model Your Campus Competition is international -- teams from 37 countries have already registered! Check out the competition website for all the details. To find out about other competitions for ANZ students, go to the ANZ student site competitions page.

Helping keep the internet safe

Posted by Carolyn Dalton, Senior Policy Counsel

Over the years, we've built tools and offered resources to help kids and families stay safe online. Our SafeSearch feature, for example, helps filter explicit content from search results. And we're committed to working with Australian community and parents' groups, schools, regulators and other like-minded Internet companies to promote a safe online environment.

As part of our ongoing efforts to provide online safety resources for parents and kids, we've created Tips for Online Safety, a site designed to help families find quick links to safety tools like SafeSearch, as well as new resources, like a video offering online safety pointers that we've developed in partnership with Common Sense Media. The video offers easy-to-implement tips, like how to set privacy and sharing controls on social networking sites and the importance of having reasonable rules for Internet use at home with appropriate levels of supervision.

Users can also download our new Online Family Safety Guide (PDF), which includes useful Internet Safety pointers for parents.

We all have roles to play in keeping kids safe online. Parents need to be involved with their kids' online lives and teach them how to make smart decisions. And Internet companies like Google need to continue to empower parents and kids with information, tools and resources

We're committed to doing our part to help put Australian parents and kids in control of their online experiences and make web surfing safer.

For further advice and assistance on how to keep kids and families safe online visit www.netalert.gov.au and www.cybersmartkids.com.au. The Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) investigates complaints about prohibited internet content and internet gambling services.

Google Transit makes its Australian debut in Perth

Posted by Oren Vandersteen, Data & Systems Manager, Transperth

(Last week Eric Schmidt was in town to announce the launch of Google Transit for Perth, the first city in the southern hemisphere. The feature is now live and we're thrilled to have a guest post from Transperth)

As a GIS systems developer working in the Public Transportation industry for the last six years, I have been following the progress of Google Transit as it has developed and expanded across the globe. Given my background, I was particularly excited when Transperth was approached by Google two months ago to ask whether we would be interested in integrating our public transport information with the Google Transit system. It did not take long to convince Transperth Management of the benefits to the public that Google Transit would add to the services Transperth already provided, not to mention the increased positive exposure for Transperth as the first agency in the southern hemisphere to be included!

After talking through these benefits, and the next steps for integrating Transperth services with an employee from Google, Transperth agreed to put Google Transit to the test. To my surprise, I was able to produce a valid Transit Feed for testing that same day! The Google Transit Feed Specification that Google had defined was simple enough that I was able to easily translate our schedule information into the required data feed. After just two months of testing and working with the guys at Google, Transperth and Google were happy to announce that the feed provided would soon be ready for release.


It is certainly an advantage that Transperth operates the only fully integrated public transport system in Australia where you can board any bus, train or ferry service on your journey using one fully integrated ticketing system (both electronic and cash based) and access the one set of journey planning and timetable data.

Now, I'm proud to say that Transperth's public transportation times are live in Google Maps! You can search for them directly in Google Maps, or from the Google Transit homepage.


In the future, I am looking forward to the possibility of expanding the feed provided to include not only the metropolitan area, but also all the major regional town centres in Western Australia managed by the Public Transport Authority, as well as the inter-town TransWA services. I am also looking forward to working with other public transport agencies from around the world to see how the Google Transit system can be further improved in the future - especially first by encouraging them to be a part of it! It's great to know that exciting new features are already being discussed by several agencies around the world, and I look forward to seeing Google Transit continue to innovate and provide great services for Transperth users to take advantage of.

We are young and free

Posted by Andrew McRae, Senior Software Engineer

A short time ago I visited the British Museum, where I had the privilege of viewing the prized exhibit known as the Rosetta Stone. The stone contains three different scripts: classical Greek, demotic Egyptian, and hieroglyphic Egyptian. It is famous because, prior to its discovery, hieroglyphic Egyptian was undecipherable. It did not matter at all that the historians had many samples of the language - what they lacked was the ability to decode it! The stone brought to light meaning that had been stored away in Egyptian scripture for thousands of years.

More recently, much has been made of how rapidly our digital standards are changing. As more and more application formats are developed (similar to the evolution of different languages), we begin to need more and more digital “Rosetta Stones” to unlock the information stored on our computers and disks. For example, I recently brought an old 8" floppy disk into the office, just to show the younger generation of Google engineers an artifact from my own garage. While we can read stone tablets that are thousands of years old, given the rate at which digital formats evolve and new storage mediums are invented, we can't read documents that were written just a few years ago (without going to the computer museum to dig up the right equipment).

This is a very real problem experienced in very practical situations, such as the need for the National Archives to digitally store official documents for future access. Beyond just physically reading the media, a format is needed that can be guaranteed to be usable, whatever happens over time. Similar to the Internet Protocols, this is only practically achieved with openly published and supported standards.

So this week Google Australia, along with The Internet Society and the Sydney Linux Users Group, is hosting the first Sydney Document Freedom Day, a global day for document liberation. It will be a day of grassroots effort to educate the public about the importance of Free Document Formats and Open Standards in general. We are very pleased to welcome Senator Kate Lundy and David Vaile, Executive Director of the Cyberspace Law and Policy Centre, UNSW as our guest speakers. We encourage and invite everyone who is interested in document freedom, accessibility of information and open standards to attend.

More details can be found at the Sydney Document Freedom Day web site.

Making iGoogle even more personal

Posted by Vinny Vijeyakumaar, Customer Solutions Engineer

If you haven't yet given iGoogle a try, now there's a great new reason to take a gander: our personalised gadget maker. Rolled out in the States last year, the iGoogle gadget maker is now global, and available in all 42 languages supported by iGoogle.

While our goal is to organise the world's information, we also want to let you organise your world in the way that works best for you. The personalised gadget maker allows anyone, even those totally unfamiliar with coding, to create custom gadgets for their iGoogle homepage. Along with the thousands of gadgets already available to choose from, this means you can create a homepage that is especially tailored to include the things you care about, whether it be the photos from your road trip along the great Ocean Road, a countdown to this year's AFL season kickoff (not long now!), or even notes from a loved one. It's completely up to you!

Helping you to make your mark on Google Maps

Mickey Kataria, Product Manager

At Google, we do our best to organise all the information that's out there in the world, but admittedly, there's a lot, and things are changing all the time.

So not too long ago, we turned to our most valuable resource for help: you. We opened up Google Maps (in Australia, New Zealand and the US) to user edits, allowing people to move Google Maps markers for their homes and businesses. Our maps are now more accurate, open and useful, thanks to you. In the past few months, you've edited addresses and moved markers right across Australia, from WA to Queensland.

But that was just the beginning. Starting today, anyone with a Google account can log into Google Maps and edit business listings. Moving the marker was helpful, but if your local music store moves around the corner, and you or your friends need to rock, we figured you should be able to change the address too. Now you can edit lots of information about businesses, including name, address, phone number, website, or business category, and even mark a business for deletion if it's closed down. Rock on.


Of course, businesses who have uploaded or edited their own details in the Local Business Centre remain in control of their listings.

In addition to being able to edit existing information, you can also add new places to the map, be it a business, landmark or even point of interest. Within moments of adding, others around the world will be able to search for your contributions. A great diving spot? A new cafe down the street? Whether you're an aspiring cartographer, or just happen to notice something missing, you're the experts, and we want you to share your world. To give it a try, just click the "add a place to the map" link the next time you search on Google Maps.

We will have moderators confirming the information you add, and you will still be able to see original map information if you prefer.