Today, we're announcing our second annual Doodle 4 Google contest in the U.S. Google doodles are the special "dressed-up" logos we run on our homepage for holidays and other events, and Doodle 4 Google is an opportunity for one child to have his/her artwork displayed on our homepage as a doodle for hundreds of millions of people to see. This year's theme is "What I Wish for the World," as we really want to tap into not only children's creativity but also what they want their future to look like.We're very excited this year to be partnering with the Smithsonian's, Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum. Since Cooper-Hewitt is focused on design and education and fostering the brightest design minds of tomorrow, they were a natural partner for Doodle 4 Google. Their partnership also means that this year's prizes not only include having your artwork on the Google homepage for a day, a college scholarship, and a technology grant for your school, but also having your work (and that of all 40 finalists) exhibited at a Smithsonian museum!
Most of this year's contest remains the same as last year's. (For inspiration, you can see Grace Moon's beautiful winning doodle "Up In the Clouds" in our Doodle Gallery). However, there are a few changes. First, we've increased the college scholarship prize for the national winner to $15,000. We've also added a $10,000 prize for the school district that submits the most high-quality entries. Finally, in partnership with Cooper-Hewitt, we'll be celebrating the 40 finalists and announcing the national winner in New York City, to coincide with the opening of the exhibit. Please visit the official competition website for a full listing of all contest rules and requirements.
Only students from registered schools can enter, so teachers, if you want to participate please register your school by March 17, 2009. All doodles must be submitted by March 31, 2009.
Google has launched a new feature in Google Maps called Latitude that allows users to share their location with friends and family. The service won't pinpoint the exact location but it offers a good idea of where your friends are, says Google.
Location aware services are becoming increasingly popular among smartphone users. For instance iPhone users can download Loopt, a map sharing application for cellphones that pretty much works along the same lines as Google Latitude.
Google users have to opt in to use the Latitude feature and invite friends to join. If accepted, users can spot friends in the same neighborhood through the maps and text, IM or email them.
Naturally, all this raises questions about privacy. Google says it has plenty of settings in its latest feature to take care of privacy concerns. Once you've shared your location, you can hide it from individual friends or all of your friends at once, says Google. Users can also turn off Google Latitude completely at any time.
Google Latitude is available for Android phones, the iPhone and iPod Touch, most color BlackBerry phones, Windows Mobile and Symbian users.
Sometime late Friday/ early Saturday morning, Google flagged the ENTIRE internet as malware. Had you been awake and Googled anything during this time FROM ANYWHERE ON THE PLANET, every result would have included a link that said "This site may harm your computer".
Everything appears to be back to normal now, so feel free to go back to Google image searching all of the tentatcle porn you can eat again, just make sure your Mom doesn't walk in on you again. That last time was AWKWARD.
It had to come sometime and it is here! Google Chrome is the new kid on the block when it comes to web browsers and I must say that it seems like I will be trading all my browsers for the Google Chrome.
I have downloaded the browser earlier today and it was installed automatically on my computer in record time. I was quite surprised to find that the Google Chrome browser is much faster than expected and that makes it a winner in my eyes at this time. The new graphic user interface is clean; another plus from me, but it was quite another story figuring out where what is on the menu. It took me a short while to discover the navigation of the Google Chrome browser and now it is already making me think twice before opening any other browser that I used in the past.
What I found comforting is the ?New incognito window? function that allow you to surf any site and leave absolutely no trace in your browser history nor does it leave any other tell tale information such as cookies. This is a function that I dreamt off for a long time, not that I want to use it to be anonymous but rather to keep my surfing habits private from advertising companies that make use of cookie tracking.
The next welcoming sight is the amount of actual screen space that is available for viewing the website that you visit. With no menu bar you claim a few inches of screen space that make it an absolute pleasure to browse web pages with continuous content that was split in the past. Another screen space saver is the browser tabs and the way that is arranged at the top of the screen. It has the same feel as Firefox but to my surprise I actually found that it is much better to use and more user-friendly.
Back to the installation; after the Google Chrome browser was installed, I cinched at the idea of downloading Flash again or to get flash to work properly with the browser ? like with Firefox. Quite to my surprise I found flash working perfectly on loading my first site with a flash file embedded into the pages. This is once again a plus point for the Google Chrome browser.
There is another screen space saver and that is the combination of the address and search bar. It is at first very strange to make use of this function if it was not used before. While using IE, not by choice, I got lazy and would just type the keyword in the address bar and hit enter. With Google setup as my default search, it just started the Google search with the keyword and it seems like this was the whole idea from Google in the first place. Well, they deserve the Noddy Badge for this nice function ? sorry if you do not understand the expression but this is a color full South African expression.
The real reason for my enthusiasm for the Google Chrome browser is the fact that I now will be able to read through my articles without having to scroll up and down through the pages as there will be enough screen space to read the bulk of the articles on my Find Article Site. The Google Chrome browser also loads much faster and will make my life much easier dealing with my Find Article site.
