Fred Palma | Computer Scientist

How Google works

Tags: Google by Fred
No Comments »

From Computerworld by Steven

As everyone knows by now who follows technology news, the Financial Times reported that Google “is phasing out the internal use of Microsoft’s ubiquitous Windows operating system because of security concerns.” Some doubt this story, because they say that’s its vague about sources. Well, I asked, and the story is ‘mostly’ right. Google is switching away from Windows to Linux and Macs, but it’s not just because security.

I e-mailed Google and, according to a Google official, while “We’re always working to improve the efficiency of our business, but we don’t comment on specific operational matters.” That’s not much of a statement, but did you notice the key word there? It’s ‘efficiency.’

I then got on the phone, IM and e-mail with my friends at Google and they told me off-the-record pretty much what the Google employees told the Financial Times that “Many people have been moved away from [Windows] PCs, mostly towards Mac OS, following the China hacking attacks.” But, following that efficiency word around, I was also told that Linux was far cheaper than Windows and that many Google users preferred it, in any case, to Windows. While many others found Macs to just be more useful than Windows PCs.

Google’s internal users have eclectic tastes when it comes to Linux. Ubuntu was quite popular, but so was-surprise!–Google’s own Android; Fedora; openSUSE; and the newly released MeeGo. As for the Mac users, I got the impression there may be more MacBook Pro users at Google than there are at Apple.

The Linux users preferred it for all the usual reasons: It was faster, more secure, and more stable than Windows. In addition, it did everything they needed. As you might guess, Chrome is the Web browser of choice for Google Linux users, and many of them use Google’s SaaS (Software as a Service) applications like Google Docs. As one of them told me, “Why should I waste my time with Windows and all its pain in the ass junk when I can do everything I need to do with Chrome on Ubuntu?” The Mac users, in turn, sounded like most people who like Macs. They preferred its interface and applications to those of either Linux or Windows.

Now, some analysts claim that Google’s move away from Windows isn’t about security at all. Instead, they would have it that it’s all about Google positioning itself to do battle with Microsoft and Windows. I’m sure that’s part of it too, but for their claims that Windows is secure is just utter and total nonsense.Windows is insecure by design. Always has been, always will be. To pretend that Windows’ security costs and failures aren’t important to Fortune 500 companies is total balderdash.

Have these fools forgotten that China attacked Google and many other major companies only a few months ago? Do you think sticking with an operating system that’s has as many holes in as a fisherman’s net make sense? I don’t think so! As one staffer told me, “I am not going to be the next guy to hose the company because of Windows.”

Sure, Mac OS X has its security problems as well, but, in practice, it’s still more secure than Windows. As for Linux, it’s more secure than either one, and it’s always been much tougher to attack than the others.

There’s also been some silly talk about how Google can’t really mean that they’re switching away from Windows because so many of their users depend on Windows. Uh… what makes you think that just because the rank and file is moving to other operating systems means that the developers aren’t going to be using Windows machines? Heck, I’m about as pro-Linux desktop a person on the planet, and I use Windows PCs all the time for reviews. Of course, Google will still use Windows system for development and testing.

I’m also sure that there are some special applications that don’t exist on Linux and Macs that will still be running on Windows PCs. But, seriously, what work-a-day jobs can’t you do on a Linux PC or Mac these days? Are there any? I can go days without ‘needing’ to touch my Windows PCs.

My buddy Jason Perlow, who also runs multiple operating systems, has found that he can meet 80% of his computing needs without Windows and for the rest he uses virtualized Windows on Linux. That works for me, and it probably does for Google as well.

The bottom line is that Google wants to be both more secure and more efficient. To do that, it makes perfect sense for them to abandon Windows for Linux and Mac OS X. Come to think of it, it makes perfect sense for most companies as well.

Tags: Google, Linux, Microsoft, Windows by Fred
No Comments »

By Susan Milius from sciencenews.org

Ecologists are taking a page, and its ranking, from Google.

A new algorithm inspired by the search engine works well for predicting which species losses will trigger the fastest collapse of a food web, says theoretical ecologist Stefano Allesina of the University of Chicago.

Food webs describe the pattern of what eats what in the neighborhood. If one kind of grass or bug, for example, disappears, creatures that fed on it would need to find something else for lunch. If they couldn’t, or if the alternative entrées went extinct too, then the loss could trigger a cascade of extinctions. Losing certain species can starve so many others that the whole food web unravels.

The new algorithm works much like PageRankTM, Google’s system for ranking the importance of Web pages. The food web version did a better job of predicting collapse than simply comparing the number of connections each species has with other species in the food web. The method also beat out analyzing the network to find hub species, Allesina and Mercedes Pascual of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor report online September 3 in PLoS Computational Biology.

“The problem of how ecosystems are likely to respond to the loss of species is quite important, particularly in light of how many different ways human activities are resulting in the local extinctions of populations,” says computational ecologist Jennifer Dunne of the Santa Fe Institute in New Mexico. Global warming, the introduction of species such as the zebra mussel, development that destroys habitat, pollution and plenty of other menaces make food web vulnerability an urgent concern, she says.

Allesina got the idea for treating food webs like the World Wide Web while he was at the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis in Santa Barbara, Calif., and chanced upon a description of Google’s page ranking system. “I said, ‘That looks familiar,’’’ he remembers. In essence, the system calculates a page’s importance, or value to searchers, depending on the importance of the pages that link to it. Through the magic of mathematics, it works. In a food web, species draw importance from the importance of the species that eat them.

The Google ranking system, though, essentially assumes that any page might lead to any other page. But that doesn’t make sense for food webs. “Energy does not go from the grass to the lion without going through the zebra,” Allesina says. He and Pascual only made links between predator and prey. And for every species the researchers added a path to a “detritus pool.” All species can thus die, decay and become nutrients for plants or the other primary producers of food in the web.

Page ranking system inspires algorithm for predicting food webs’ vulnerability

To compare their algorithm with others, the researchers used information from real-world food webs. One of the other programs, called a genetic algorithm, provided a gold standard. The new algorithm matched the genetic algorithm’s results without its heavy computational demands, Allesina and Pascual report.

Dunne calls the approach a “novel, exciting contribution.” Now, she says, it would be interesting to try to bring the algorithm closer to real life by adding factors such as the relative amounts of energy flowing through the connections.

Tags: Google by Fred
No Comments »

Use the following operators:

• subject:
  Search the Subject .
  Ex: subject:contact finds all messages with “contact” in the Subject.
• from:
  Search for sender name and email address. Partial addresses are okay.
  Ex: from:Obama finds all messages from “obama@usa.gov”, but also all messages from “barack.obama@defense.gov”.
• to:
  Search the To line for names and addresses.
  Ex: to:congresso@brasil.gov.br finds all messages sent to this email.
• cc:
  Search recipients in the Cc field.
  Ex: cc:suzuki@sayonara.jp finds all messages that were sent to suzuki@sayonara.jp as a carbon copy.
• bcc:
  Search for addresses and names in the Bcc field.
  Ex: bcc:albert finds all messages that you sent with, for example, “albert@einstein.de” in the Bcc field.
• label:
  Search for messages assigned a label. (Replace whitespace characters in label names with hyphens.)
  Ex: “label:public-software finds all messages labeled “public software”.
• is:starred
  Search for messages that are starred.
• is:unread
  Search for new and unread messages.
• is:read
  Search for messages that have already been opened.
• has:attachment
  Search for messages that have files attached to them.
• filename:
  Search within file names of attachments. You can also search for file name extensions to restrict your search to certain file types.
  Ex: filename:.opf finds all messages with open document format  file attached.
• lang:
  Search for messages in a particular language. (Specify the language in English; “Chinese”, Portuguese works, but “中文”, “Tupi-guarani” or “Mandarin” do not, for example.)
  Ex: lang:French returns all emails that contain at least un peu de Français.
• in:
  Search in a standard “folder”. You can search in Drafts, Inbox, Chats, Sent, Spam, Trash and All.
  Ex: in:drafts finds all messages in your Drafts folder.
• after:
  Search for messages sent after a date. The date must given in YYYY/MM/DD format.
  Ex: after:2009/09/09 finds all messages sent or received after (and not including) September 9, 2009.
• before:
  Search for messages sent before a date.
  Ex: before:2007/07/07 finds all messages sent or received on July 7, 2007 and earlier.

Operators and search terms can be combined with the following modifiers:

• By default, terms are combined with (an invisible) “AND”.
  Ex: important update finds all messages that contain both “important” and “update”.
• “”
  Search for a phrase. Case is disregarded.
  Ex: “social development” finds all messages containing the phrase “social development”; subject:”computer science” finds all messages that have “computer science” in the Subject field.
• OR
  Search for messages containing at least one of two terms or expressions.
  Ex: feijoada or churrasco finds messages that contain either “feijoada” or “churrasco” or both; (.. I’m hungry..)  from:lula or label:2do finds messages that either come from a sender that contains “email.guide” or appear under the label “2do”.
• -
  Search for messages that do not contain a term or expression.
  Ex: -pizza finds all messages that do not contain the word “pizza”; “diet -macaroni” finds all messages that contain the word “diet” but not “macaroni”; subject:”priority info” -from:boss finds all messages with “priority info” in the subject that were not sent from an email address or name containing “boss”.
• ()
  Group search terms or expressions.
  Ex: subject:(you see) finds messages that have both “you” and “see” somewhere in the Subject line (but not necessarily as a phrase); from:boss (subject:(urgent OR now) OR label:todo-list)” finds all messages from a sender who has “email.guide” in their name that either have “urgent” or “now” (or both) in the Subject line or appear under the label “todo-list”.

Tags: Google, search by Fred
No Comments »

Google’s Search options let you slice and dice your search results, explore your search and generate different views of your results page to more easily and quickly find what you need

Tags: Google, search by Fred
No Comments »

Google announced Search Options, which are a collection of tools that let you slice and dice your results and generate different views to find what you need faster and easier.

We know that people search for a wide variety of things and we’re continually thinking of new search features to help them find information more quickly and easily. The idea for the Search Options panel originated as a way to accommodate the functionality offered by these new features within the search results page. While it might seem like the panel was simple to put together, a lot of collaboration between design, research, and engineering happened behind the scenes in order to produce the best experience possible.

The team began by generating a broad range of directions, which we refined through design sessions and reviews. Confident about a handful of concepts, we began to seek out user feedback using eye-tracking and usability studies. These studies provided us with valuable feedback about how people understood the options in the panel and interacted with them.

Here’s an example of an eye-tracking path that illustrates how a participant wanted to get a sense of the quality of the results before deciding what search option to apply: 

After each study, we iterated on the designs, making changes to everything from the order and behavior of the options, to the location of the panel and the way people opened and closed it. We also paid close attention to the visual design of the options panel. We wanted it to feel familiar –- not only to work the way you expect from Google, but to look and feel like Google, too. Even though you just started using the panel, we hope it will seem as if it were there all along. 

Below, you can see some of our initial concepts for the Search Options panel:

And here are examples of various iterations, once we had a firm concept in mind:

Once the designs were further solidified, we ran a number of tests with a small portion of our live searches to see how many visitors used the Search Options panel and which options were most popular. This quantitative research complemented qualitative feedback to give us a more complete idea of people’s understanding of Search Options. This process brought us to what you see today.

Even now that the Search Options panel has launched, the work is not over. We’ll continue to monitor how people interact with Google Search, find ways to improve the user experience, listen to your feedback, come up with new tools, and, who knows, maybe even add more wonder to the wonder wheel.

Posted by Jen Kozenski Devins, Jamie Divine, Melanie Kellar, and Marcin Wichary, User Experience Team

Google Advanced Search

Tags: Google, search by Fred
No Comments »

By Ben Lisbakken, Developer Programs Engineer

For me, documentation isn’t always enough to learn about APIs; I need examples that I can play with. That’s why I started a fun project recently–a tool for teaching developers how to use Google’s JavaScript APIs: the AJAX API Playground. I have been working on this in my 20% time and today I am proud to announce that we are launching the AJAX API Playground as the official way that Google will show JavaScript samples!

The AJAX API Playground is currently loaded with over 170 samples for 8 Google JavaScript APIs (Maps, Search, Feeds, Calendar, Visualization, Language, Blogger, Libraries and Earth) that you can edit and run to help you explore what Google’s APIs have to offer. There are also save and export features. The save feature allows you to hold onto an edited sample so you can continue working on it later, while export lets you modify a sample and publish the code to a permanent url.

As the AJAX API Playground is built on App Engine, you can create your own App Engine instance to show off your code samples. The code is open sourced under an Apache 2.0 license and uses several open source libraries and tools, including jQuery, jQuery UI, YUI Compressor, and CodeMirror. You can find the code on Google Project Hosting and learn about adding samples on the project wiki.

Stay tuned for more samples for more APIs. Enjoy!

From: Google Code Blog

Tags: Google by Fred
No Comments »

Google’s Vic Gundotra said he wanted to move the web forward

For Google the future is about beefing up the browser and its bottom line.

This honest explanation of what motivates the search giant was given at Google IO, its developers conference being held in San Francisco.

One of the “reasons we invest in moving the web forward is if it benefits Google economically,” admitted Vic Gundotra, engineering vice president.

But he also stressed: “The more money Google makes, the more it pours back into open source projects.”

High on the agenda at IO was Android, Google’s open source software platform being designed for smart phones.

A demo at the conference revealed some new applications for its Android mobile operating system.

These include a way to unlock phones by drawing a specific shape on the touch screen, a compass tool that automatically orientates maps when a user looks at photographic images of a city, a magnifying tool to zoom in on web content and a mobile version of the video game Pac Man.

The Android touchscreen is reminiscent of the iPhone

The phone being used at the conference relied on fingertip touch but Andy Rubin, who is overseeing the project, said Android could also be tailored to work with a tracking ball.

The first phones powered by Android are due out in the second half of this year.

With about three billion mobile phones already on the market, some analysts believe Google could make about $5 billion annually within five years.

‘Key goals’

Google’s engineering head Mr Gundotra played down any notion that Android is set to take on the iPhone even though it looks and acts a lot like Apple’s phone.

“I wouldn’t say that at all. I think the iPhone is just a world-class device with a great web browser that delivers in many respects on one of Google’s key goals; to bring the web to the mobile device.”

“I am a very avid user of Apple products. I buy everything they make. We wish every mobile phone was as good as the iPhone. Apple demonstrates there is plenty of opportunity to go around.”

A demo of Pacman on the Android platform was shown

Many of the developers at IO had come to hear about Google’s App Engine, which was launched six weeks ago as one of a host of development platforms aimed at encouraging developers to put the browser ahead of the desktop.

Ten thousand people signed up for beta testing while another 150,000 went onto a waiting list.

The reason so many developers want to work with the engine is because it uses the same infrastructure that Google uses for many of its applications.

Create something

During a conference presentation, Kevin Gibbs, the technical lead for the project, announced to cheers and applause that the engine would now be open to everyone and there was no waiting list.

Google hopes Earth in a browser will be as popular as Google Maps

“You can log in immediately and start using it, so please create something and let us know what you think.”

Google also unveiled a rough draft pricing plan which will be finalised and become effective later in the year.

Under the new structure, developers start with a free quota of 500MB and enough computer processing power and bandwidth for about five million page views per month.

Mr Gibbs estimated that an application which received a total of 10 million page views would cost the developer about $40 (£20) a month.

The web has won

As a company known primarily for search, Google is trying to extend its reach and lure developers away from designing applications for the desktop and opt for the web instead.

“We want to accelerate the capability of the browser,” Mr Gundotra said during his keynote speech to developers.

Google employees are on hand to demonstrate the browser is the dominant force

“The web is maturing at an amazing rate and it’s getting better and better. I don’t think there’s any question that in terms of the question ‘What has become the dominant platform?’, the web has won.”

Demonstrating the power of the web and the browser, Google said its Google Earth 3D visualisation software could now be embedded on web sites using a simple plug-in.

Google Earth technical lead Paul Rademacher said he expected it to be popular with property sites, where people can get 3D views of houses, and on travel sites where consumers can see the view from a hotel room.

“Now inside a web page, you’ll be able to fly through San Francisco or see a 3D model of a cabin with exactly the view out the window of the mountains.”

Tags: Development, Google by Fred
No Comments »