Google Maps is now supported by Apple CarPlay, which means that iPhone users can navigate with Google Maps right from their car’s built-in display. Read on to learn how to get the most out of the new experience:
Real time information when you need it: Google Maps on CarPlay features the same navigation experience found in the app. Search for places, see alternative routes and get live, up to date information about traffic jams and delays happening right now. See an up to the minute ETA so you know exactly when you’ll be at your destination.
Never miss a beat.You know the drill. You’re rushing out the door, and you immediately start navigating on your iPhone to see how long it’ll take you to get to your destination. Google Maps on CarPlay lets you start navigation from your iPhone and immediately pick up where you left off once you’ve connected to CarPlay - because we know that minutes matter when you’re pressed for time.
No data? No problem.You can still find your way even if you have spotty reception or an expensive data plans. Whether you’re camping in the wilderness or traveling abroad, you can use downloaded maps of an area so you can see directions and use turn by turn navigation even when you can’t get online.
These are a few of our favorite things:If you’re obsessed with creating lists likewe are, you’re in luck. You can access any of your saved lists from Google Maps on CarPlay, and quickly navigate to all of your favorite places with a single tap.
Save time when commuting: If you've set up your commute within the app, you can quickly navigate to home or work. While en route, you’ll see real time traffic updates about your journey so you can be prepared for whatever the ride has in store.
To get started, make sure your iPhone is running iOS 12, update your app to Version 5 in the App Store and connect your iPhone via CarPlay. Have an Android phone? Make sure to check out Google Maps onAndroid Auto..
Ad experiences matter. They affect not only your revenue, but how audiences perceive your content. A quality cross-screen ad experience can be the difference between a loyal fanbase and a lost audience. TV programmers and distributors who understand how to deliver timely, relevant messages to their multi-device viewers have an opportunity to differentiate themselves from the competition—and drive more revenue.
Google Ad Manager has been steadily investing in advanced TV solutions to help our partners deliver seamless, customized and measurable ad experiences everywhere audiences are watching. We’re seeing strong results. Last year alone, ad impressions served to connected TVs using Ad Manager increased by more than 80 percent according to internal data. But that's only one area where advanced TV is helping partners reimagine the way people watch.
Delivering seamless experiences on all screens
Audiences today expect broadcast quality experiences no matter how they tune in. To combat issues like buffering and poor ad playback quality, a growing number of Ad Manager partners are using Dynamic Ad Insertion technology to stitch video ads into their live, linear and on-demand content. Looking at internal data from the first half of 2018, ad impressions served using Dynamic Ad Insertion grew by more than 60 percent year-over-year, and ad impressions served during live events like the 2018 World Cup increased by over 2x.
So, what does this actually mean for TV programmers and distributors? Grupo América recently shared how they used Ad Manager’s advanced TV solutions to grow their revenue and deliver more relevant ads for their digital audiences. By replacing the commercial breaks in the online broadcasts of their linear TV streams with digital video ads delivered via Dynamic Ad Insertion, they were able to increase their revenue by 4x, and improve their ad view-through rates and video completion rates by 2x and 8x, respectively.
Customized viewing, everywhere
Ad Manager’s expertise in programmatic and real-time ad decisioning helps you maximize revenue while still protecting your viewer’s experience. For instance, capabilities like Smarter TV Ad Breaks help you optimize your commercial breaks for the highest revenue based on the most relevant combination of ads, customized for each viewer—all while respecting your business rules, like competitive exclusions and frequency capping.
Building on the momentum of our digital and OTT solutions, we’re also developing and testing new features that will deliver addressable ads within linear TV broadcasts. We recently partnered with Totalplay, one of Mexico’s most innovative telecommunications and IPTV providers, to test delivering addressable ads to their TV audiences via Dynamic Ad Insertion for Linear TV. Once live, the solution will enable Totalplay to sell addressable TV ads programmatically to households across Mexico’s largest cities.
Totalplay’s CEO Eduardo Kuri Romo, is optimistic that the partnership will bring more diverse options to advertisers and lead to stronger campaign performance:
The strategy for Totalplay has always been innovation. Our bet is that linear addressable TV will enhance our ad initiatives and become relevant for our advertisers. This is the beginning of the TV ecosystem evolution—we are enhancing the experience.Eduardo Kuri Romo CEO, Totalplay
Measurable experiences, because seeing is believing
One of the more challenging aspects of delivering addressable ads across TV platforms is arriving at a common language to evaluate and measure performance. Currently there is limited standardization across the digital, OTT and linear TV space—making the convergence of insights and the ability to report on cross-screen TV performance difficult.
Ad Manager is constantly working to expand the view and coverage of our measurement capabilities by pioneering new solutions. One example of this is becoming a founding member of the Interactive Advertising Bureau’s Tech Lab Coalition for Open Measurement to enable free and open measurement for viewability across mobile apps. We continue to partner with organizations like the Media Rating Council, The Better Ads Coalition, and more, on the development of new solutions that work to benefit the industry overall.
Moving forward with advanced TV
The business of entertainment has never been more exciting, and advanced TV represents a big opportunity. Moving forward, we're here to help you reimagine the commercial break in a way that supports your business today, and in the future.
This fall, Lianne Sánchez Rodríguez is swapping her college course schedule for a map of Google’s campus. Instead of heading back to the University of Puerto Rico, Mayagüez, she will get to see firsthand what it’s like to be a software engineer.
We're committed to building a more diverse and representative Google that reflects our users. That’s why, as part of our strategy to do so, we're continuing to hire and invest in the talent of tomorrow. This fall, we welcomed Lianne, 64 other rising juniors, and 5 faculty members from 11 Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) and Hispanic-Serving Institutions (HSIs) as a part of our new Tech Exchange program.
The universities represented in the Tech Exchange program. (Top, left to right: Howard University, Florida A&M University, California State University Dominguez Hills, Morgan State University, New Mexico State University, Prairie View A&M University. Bottom, left to right: North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University, Dillard University, University of Texas--El Paso, University of Puerto Rico--Mayaguez, Spelman College)
The institutions sending students to Google this year share our commitment to making computer science education accessible and available to everyone. Tech Exchange builds on the success of a 2017 pilot program between Google and Howard University (known as Howard West), during which 26 students completed a three-month computer science education program. Half of those students have since found engineering internships at Google or in the tech industry.
Throughout the year, students will take a selection of applied CS courses, including machine learning, product management, computational theory, and database systems, from HBCU/HSI faculty and Google engineers. Michael McDonald, who usually attends Morgan State University, an HBCU in Maryland, is excited to spend the entire academic year in this kind of education environment, which he describes as unique: “We’re immersed in computer science courses and get a real-world experience.”
But this internship goes beyond the books—students will get to know other Googlers from different product areas to get a glimpse of what their futures could hold. And that all started at our kick-off ceremony this week, during which Howard alum and Google VP of Global Partnerships Bonita Stewart expressed her thrill for the program, saying, “It’s so exciting for us to create a space for everyone, as we build products for everyone.”
During the Tech Exchange Opening Ceremony, Howard University’s Dr. Wayne Frederick told the audience of students, academics and Googlers, "This program is going to have a huge impact in terms of how we groom leaders, recognizing that getting them in the professional setting early, reducing their apprehensions, is going to be crucial."
What do students hope to get from their year at Google? Lianne sums it up well: “[Tech Exchange] pushes us to get out there, to not be afraid of making mistakes … and to work hard in order to achieve our goals.”
As we wrote earlier this week, there’s a new dedicated home for news about Google Cloud. As a result, we’re kicking off a series highlighting interesting stories from Cloud so you don’t miss out. Without further ado, here’s a look at what happened with Google Cloud in August.
We showed you how to save time in spreadsheets.
For many of us, repetitive tasks in spreadsheets can be a drain on both time and focus. The Macro Recorder in Sheets can help you record time-consuming actions and automatically play them back—no coding necessary. Here’s how to use it.
We took a closer look at TPUs.
The Tensor Processing Unit (TPU) is a custom chip we designed from scratch for machine learning workloads. They’re used to power popular Google products like Translate, Photos, and Gmail, and they’re also available to our Google Cloud customers. Curious about how neural networks work, and what TPUs can do? This handy primer can teach you.
We used AI to identify street art.
There are more ways to take advantage of machine learning than business uses like identifying products or forecasting demand. One Googler used AutoML Vision to build a graffiti artist classifier that helps you identify the street artist behind your favorite urban mural.
We shared DevOps best practices.
DevOps aims to unify software development and operations, and is an important component of fast-moving teams. Adopting its best practices can help them develop, deliver, and manage software faster. In August, we sponsored Accelerate: State of DevOps 2018: Strategies for a New Economy, a survey of almost 1,900 DevOps professionals that offers a comprehensive look at how software teams are using DevOps, and what’s working for the highest performers among them.
We created a robot dance party.
It’s one thing to offer the infrastructure and services needed to create Hollywood-caliber visual effects, and another thing to show people how. At Next ‘18 we built an entire animated short over the course of three days using Google Cloud Platform. Learn more about what we did.
That was August in a nutshell, but there were a whole lot more stories to choose from. We’ll be back next month with more from Google Cloud.
Technically, the Google Doodle existed before the Google company. A few days before Google incorporated, our founders added the Burning Man festival logo to the Google homepage to indicate they were out of town. With this, a colorful legacy was born: our homepage Doodles.
In the last two decades a talented team has created thousands of illustrated, animated and interactive variations of our logo. From our humble roots of using the same clipart turkey in both the 1998 and 1999 Thanksgiving Doodles, to our Emmy-nominated VR short earlier this year (congrats, NASA! 🚀💜), we've come a long way.
As we celebrate 20 years of Google, join us on a quick trip down memory lane to revisit 20 notable Doodles from the last two decades.
First, there were early Doodles.
First Doodle ever: Burning Man Festival, 1998 Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin played with the corporate logo to indicate that they were headed to the Burning Man festival—it was their “out of office" message for Google users. With this, the idea of creatively altering the company logo was born.
First Doodle series: Google Aliens, 2000 In May 2000, five Doodles by illustrator Ian David Marsden followed aliens encountering the Google logo, then hauling it off to Mars (1, 2, 3, 4, 5).Though Doodles are traditionally tied to a milestone date, this series was just for the LOLs.
First international Doodle: Bastille Day, 2000 Larry and Sergey asked Dennis Hwang, an intern at the time, to produce a Doodle to commemorate Bastille Day. It was so well received that Dennis was appointed Google's first Chief Doodler, and Doodles started appearing regularly on the Google homepage.
First animated Doodle: Halloween, 2000 Created by guest artist Lorie Loeb, this Doodle featured two jack-o-lanterns in place of the “O’s” in Google, and was punctuated by a scary spider dangling from the “L.” Sp🎃🎃ky.
Burning man Doodle
Aliens Doodle
Bastille Day Doodle
Halloween Doodle
They became more technologically advanced...
First interactive game Doodle: 30th anniversary of PAC-MAN, 2010 Drawing inspiration from his dad’s career as an arcade technician, designer/engineer Marcin Wichary built the PAC-MAN Doodle from the ground up. The Doodle was true to PAC-MAN’s roots: it included the original game logic, graphics, sounds, and even the original bugs.
First live-action Doodle: Charlie Chaplin’s 122nd birthday, 2011 This short film featured appearances from the entire Doodle team, with Doodler Mike Dutton in the starring role. In order to stay as close to Chaplin’s original films as possible, it was recorded in Niles, California on the same set where many of his silent movies were filmed. Niles is also the home to the advisers for this Doodle, the Niles Essanay Silent Film Museum.
First Doodle slideshow: 200th Anniversary of Grimm's Fairy Tales, 2012 This Doodle was inspired by comics, and let readers pan through the story at their own pace. Doodler Matt Cruickshank’s modern take on “Little Red Riding Hood,” the tale featured flat designs and even an alternative ending.
First open-sourced code Doodle: 60th Anniversary of Stanislaw Lem's First Publication, 2011 Honoring prolific science-fiction writer Stanisław Lem, this Doodle was a mini-game designed by Sophia Foster-Dimino (inspired by the work of Polish illustrator/Lem collaborator, Daniel Mróz) that let you manipulate a robot after seeing it grow on the screen. It was the first time the code (all 17,000 lines of it!) behind a Doodle had been open sourced, allowing the public to access the code and see how the Doodle was built.
First Doodle animated via piano: Claude Debussy's 151st birthday, 2013 This Doodle panned across an 1800’s cityscape at night, and relied on a bit of technological ingenuity to perfectly time lights, smoke puffs and star twinkles to Debussy’s music. Fun fact: the music for this Doodle was performed by Doodler Leon Hong’s sister, Sabrina Hong.
PACMAN Doodle
Chaplin Doodle
Grimm's Doodle
Stanislaw Doodle
Debussy Doodle
And got even more creative.
First organic Doodle: Earth Day 2012 Life’s a garden and so are Doodles (we dig both). A handful of dedicated Doodlers rigged a camera to the roof of the building to grow this colorful Doodle. Talk about a green thumb.
First animated paper cut-out Doodle, Lotte Reiniger’s 117th birthday, 2016 In this video, Doodler Olivia Huynh, set out to recreate filmmaker and animator Lotte Reiniger’s style, painstakingly cutting out thousands of paper silhouettes, and moving them ever so slightly for each frame. Fittingly, the film featured Reiniger herself—in paper form of course!.
First Doodle with a narrated poem: Dr. Maya Angelou’s 90th Birthday, 2018 In this video Doodle, people inspired by Dr. Angelou’s life and legacy—including Alicia Keys, Martina McBride, Oprah Winfrey and even the author’s son Guy Johnson—narrated Angelou’s iconic poem “Still I Rise,” set to a backdrop of beautiful captions designed by Melissa Crowton.
First VR/360 Doodle: Celebrating Georges Méliès, 2018 This Emmy-nominated VR/360 video Doodle celebrated the pioneering French illusionist and film director Georges Méliès. The Doodle team’s Helene Leroux, in collaboration with Spotlight Stories and Nexus Studios, told the story of a Méliès-like character and his adventures on a virtual film set.
First same-day Doodle: Discovery of Water on the Moon, 2009 Doodle artist Jennifer Hom was so inspired by a news article she read about the discovery of water on the moon that she immediately set to work on a Doodle to commemorate this event. The Doodle was completed in roughly four hours, and still holds the record for fastest Doodle launch ever.
Most people featured in a Doodle: International Women’s Day, 2014 Featuring more than 100 women from all over the world, this video Doodle included such inspiring women as Russian actress, comedian and singer Nonna Grishaeva; 14-year-old Brazilian education activist Isadora Faber; Nigerian agricultural pioneer Foluso Olaniyan and many, many more.
Most partners involved in a Doodle: 44th Anniversary of the Birth of Hip Hop, 2017 This Doodle took interactivity to a new level, letting you mix samples from legendary breakbeats. Following a primer on the history of Hip Hop, narrated by Fab 5 Freddy, former host of “Yo! MTV Raps,” the Doodle gave a tutorial on how to be a virtual DJ on a pair of interactive turntables. Fittingly for a Doodle celebrating an inherently collaborative musical genre, we worked with seven creative partners and nine Hip Hop pioneers to create the Doodle, and more than 50 Hip Hop insiders helped us spread the word.
Longest production time: Celebrating Selena Quintanilla, 2017 The life of Mexican-American musician, fashion icon, entrepreneur, philanthropist and international superstar Selena Quintanilla was celebrated in a musical Doodle video animated by Doodler Kevin Laughlin. Set to one of Selena’s most iconic songs, “Bidi Bidi Bom Bom,” the video illustrated Selena’s rise from childhood phenom to musical powerhouse and took 18 months to produce. If you count that Doodle team member Perla Campos swears she was born to help bring this Doodle to life, it was a work in progress for nearly 30 years. 💃🏽
First Doodle 4 Google contest, 2005 The first Doodle 4 Google contest took place in the U.K., and found its first winner in 11-year-old Lisa Wainaina’s design, “The Day of the Child.” The contest, which now takes place every year in multiple countries, invites students to design their own Doodle and compete for a chance at scholarships and technology packages for their schools.
First Doodle Quiz, Earth Day Quiz 2015 This totally scientific quiz helped people discover themselves in the animal kingdom—and learn fun animal facts in the process. Animal-loving celebrities like Jane Goodall and Edward Norton filmed videos sharing their personal critters, and helped raise money for several animal charities. You can still take the quiz by searching for “earth day quiz” on Google.
Best cat cameo: Momo the Cat, Halloween 2016 An animated version of Doodler artist Juliana Chen’s cat made his second of several Doodle appearances in this adorable Halloween-themed game. The game included five levels, magic spells, and a powerful wand to fend of ghostly foes. Momo made appearances in 2015 and 2017's Halloween Doodles as well, and has inspired a *lot* of Momo fan art.
Doodle 4 Google 2005
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INTERNAL_USE_ONLY_10-31-Halloween-HiRes.png
On behalf of Doodlers past and present, thank you for viewing, sharing and clicking our creations all these years. You never know what will show up in our Doodles in the next few decades—probably some turkeys, maybe a cat—but it will definitely be made with love and appreciation for your curiosity and support.
Asking “what if,” and using technology to find the answer, has always been a part of what we do at Google. In 2011, we started the Google Science Fair to inspire teens to answer their own “what if’s” using science, technology, engineering and math. I’ve been a fan of science fairs all my life—but I’m particularly fond of Google’s—and this year’s edition kicks off today. Students from around the world will tinker (and code, experiment, design and build), until they come up with the answer they’re after.
Our most recent Google Science Fair grand prize winner, Kiara Nirghi—an 18 year-old young woman from South Africa—is passionate about finding new ways to protect our environment, especially her community that’s affected by drought. I had the opportunity to chat with Kiara and ask her a few questions about what inspired her:
What question did you try to answer with your Google Science Fair project?
“Can fruit waste save crops during a drought?” I wanted to see if it would be possible for crops to grow without a regular water supply.
How did you get interested in this question?
When my family and I were driving to the South African province of KwaZulu-Natal, I was shocked to pass empty reservoirs that had previously been full of water. It was the first time I saw the effects of drought on my community, and it inspired me to research potential solutions that would be safe for the environment.
Was there a moment when things didn't work as you had hoped?
I think that science and failure undoubtedly work hand-in-hand … not achieving the "correct" results but still persevering could take you to an award-winning solution or it could take you to a whole different idea. You have to start from the beginning again, but that's also fine. Perseverance will always move you toward the next step to making the world better!
What advice would you give other students who also want to make a difference?
Never be afraid to simply ask a question. Asking is always the first step to discovering an answer that will make a difference or solve a problem.
To join, visit Googlesciencefair.com and check out our new materials, thought-starters and inspiration to help you develop your idea. We know teachers play an important role in encouraging students and helping them work through their questions, so we’ve created a new set of ISTE-certified resources and classroom activities to help get the ideas flowing.
Submissions will be accepted through December 12—the winner will get a $50,000 scholarship, and 20 global finalists will come to Google headquarters to share their projects and be in the running for scholarships and prizes from National Geographic, Lego Education, Scientific American, and Virgin Galactic.
So now the question is, what if you could win the Google Science Fair?
Inbox by Gmail has been a great place to experiment with new ideas like snoozing emails to later, as well as try the latest AI-powered experiences like Smart Reply, Nudges and high-priority notifications to help you stay productive.
Four years after launching Inbox in 2014, we've learned a lot about how to make email better—and we’ve taken popular Inbox experiences and added them into Gmail to help more than a billion people get more done with their emails everyday. As we look to the future, we want to take a more focused approach that will help us bring the best email experience to everyone. As a result, we’re planning to focus solely on Gmail and say goodbye to Inbox by Gmail at the end of March 2019.
We introduced the new Gmail in April this year, incorporating many of the same features you’ve come to love about Inbox plus newer features like Smart Compose, which helps you draft emails faster. Read more about how these features in Gmail can help you manage your inbox better in this post.
We know change is hard, so we’ve created a transition guide to help you switch from Inbox to the new Gmail with ease. All your conversations are already waiting for you in Gmail. See you there.
As researchers on the Android team, we spend a lot of time out in the world, listening to our users. To do our best work, we leave our passions behind. Objectivity is key. But it’s hard not to develop empathy, especially when you start to notice that not everything about people’s experience with technology is positive.
As early as 2015, we noticed that increasingly, people we talked to were raising a flag about how distracting notifications on mobile devices can be. So we started thinking a lot about the role of notifications on people’s phones, and how we could build a better experience to help people achieve balance. We started with some small changes in Android Nougat, like bundling notifications and making it easier to reply to a message without opening the app.
But we knew there was more that we could do to understand how phones might be making it harder for people to disconnect, and the frustration this was generating. So last year my colleague Safia Baig and I embarked on a research project to do that, and we’ve just published the results.
What we found
Working across different cultures, we conducted our research in the U.S. and Switzerland. We spoke at length with and shadowed for hours at a time 19 participants aged 18-65, using either Android or iOS smartphones. We also analyzed data we had previously collected from 112 participants in China, Japan, Singapore, Sweden, and the U.S. over a period of two years.
Surprisingly, we found few differences across cultures, countries, gender, age groups or types of devices people were using. Across the board, mobile devices loaded with social media, email and news apps, were creating a constant sense of obligation, generating unintended personal stress.
Our research found two reasons why people's relationships with their phones was evolving in this manner. First, there are a lot of engaging things to do with your phone, and it’s hard to break the habit. One person we interviewed said that the phone was far from liberating: “It’s like a prison. You can get lost in your phone and not get out. Social media, gaming, being available [to others] all day… you can’t get away.” Second, people feel that there is a social obligation to reply to messages very quickly, and to be available all the time: “My phone is like a little pet—it goes with me from room to room. I don’t want to miss any messages.”
While people look forward to vacations, one of the few times they are able to disconnect, they also want to be able to choose when to detach: When they have an unplanned or forced disconnection (e.g., leaving their phone at home, running out of battery), they feel anxiety and extreme inconvenience. They lose productivity, they worry about others wondering why they’re not replying to messages, they worry about missing important information—they have a fear of missing out (“FOMO”).
How we can help people find balance
Our research indicates three ways the mobile industry can help people toward a healthy relationship with their phones:
Facilitate disconnection—by giving people information that helps them reflect upon their own usage and digital behaviors, and the tools to disconnect, like the Digital Wellbeing Dashboard in Android 9, and YouTube’s Time Watched profile
Reduce temptation to re-engage, by adding an extra step like the App Timer in Android 9 Pie
Allow for partial disconnection—for example, keeping the essential phone functionalities available, while restricting other applications
The App Timer in Android 9 is an example of how phones can be built to reduce temptation to re-engage
We’ve begun to make some of these changes across Google products with our Digital Wellbeing effort, which we announced at I/O this year. Digital Wellbeing is a core concept of Android 9 Pie, and we’ve recently introduced more controls across platforms like YouTube. We’re also working on building tools that allow parents to control the type of access their kids have to technology, through Family Link.
A sense of obligation has crept into tech. People want tools to break it. They want to be able to set aside their phone sometimes, not worry about missing anything absolutely urgent, and feel in control of their phone use. We have a responsibility to make that easier—to give people a way to reclaim their time and not feel tied to their devices. But we also believe that we should give people something more—not just more control or a better balanced relationship with technology, but the “joy of missing out,” or “JOMO.”
Technology should improve your life, instead of distracting from it. There’s a lot more work to be done, but the first step toward bringing JOMO into people’s lives is to start listening. This research represents some of our earliest efforts to do that, with much more to come.
Every time you open your browser, you have a mission to accomplish: trips to plan, emails to send, stories to read, skills to learn. We built Chrome to help you do all of those things as quickly and safely as possible. Today we celebrate Chrome’s 10th birthday, and just like a kid on the cusp of double digits, we’re constantly growing and changing. In the case of Chrome, those changes happen every six weeks to bring you new features and security updates, but our 10th birthday update is bigger than normal. Before we blow out our birthday candles, here’s a rundown of the updates coming your way today:
Jazzing up our look
First up, Chrome has a new look. You can see it across all platforms—desktop, Android, and iOS—where you’ll notice more rounded shapes, new icons and a new color palette. These updates have a simpler look and will (hopefully) boost your productivity. Take tabs, for instance. Are you a secret tab-hoarder? No judgment. We changed the shape of our tabs so that the website icons are easier to see, which makes it easier to navigate across lots of tabs. On mobile, we've made a number of changes to help you browse faster, including moving the toolbar to the bottom on iOS, so it's easy to reach. And across Chrome, we simplified the prompts, menus, and even the URLs in your address bar.
Introducing the new Chrome.
Get things done faster
You get a lot done online these days—booking travel and appointments, shopping and working through your to-do lists across multiple sites at once. And we want to make sure that you can do all of those things easily and safely. Now, Chrome can more accurately fill in your passwords, addresses, and credit card numbers, so that you can breeze through online checkout forms. All this information is saved to your Google account, and can also now be accessed directly from the Chrome toolbar.
We’ve also significantly improved the way Chrome handles passwords. Staying secure on the web means using strong and unique passwords for every different site. When it’s time to create a new password, Chrome will now generate one for you (so you’re not using your puppy’s name for all of your passwords anymore). Chrome will save it, and next time you sign in, it’ll be there, on both your laptop and phone.
Chrome’s updated password manager generates and stores unique, strong passwords for you.
Smart answers directly in your search bar
You know the box at the top of Chrome that combines the search bar and address bar into one? We call it the Omnibox, and we built it so that you can get to your search results as fast as possible. Today, we’re making it even more convenient to use. It will now show you answers directly in the address bar without having to open a new tab—from rich results on public figures or sporting events, to instant answers like the local weather via weather.com or a translation of a foreign word.
Get all your answers without leaving your current tab.
Plus, a bonus if you find yourself with two dozen tabs open across three browser windows: Search for a website in your Omnibox and Chrome will tell you if it’s already open and let you jump straight to it with “Switch to tab.” Soon, you’ll be able to search files from your Google Drive directly in your Omnibox too.
Things just got personal
Everyone uses Chrome their own way, so we made it easier to personalize. You can now create and manage shortcuts to your favorite websites directly from the new tab page—simply open a new tab and “Add shortcut.” And as if you needed an excuse to look at more pictures of your dog, you can now customize the background of a newly-opened tab with a photo of Fido.
What’s happening under the hood
While today brings changes to the part of Chrome you can see, we're always working on "behind the scenes” improvements to Chrome, and we've made a lot of those in 2018. We launched an ad filter to keep you safe from malicious and annoying ads, helped move the web to HTTPS to keep you secure online, launched site isolation which provides deeper defense against many types of attacks including Spectre, and brought VR and AR browsing to Chrome. And we’re now rolling out a set of new experiments to improve Chrome’s startup time, latency, usage of memory, and usability.
Chrome wouldn’t be where it is without the developer community, our partners in The Chromium Projects. So we’re also rolling out some updates just for them, from new CSS features to improved performance tracking ability.
We'll be back with deep dives on our beloved Chrome Dino, the new password manager and the thinking beyond today’s redesign throughout the next couple weeks. Now, time to eat some cake!
This summer, we’ve brought the Google Assistant to more devices across Europe and the rest of the world to help you get answers and get things done in more languages (most recently supporting Spanish, Swedish and Dutch).
At IFA 2018, we’re adding multilingual support, so that the Assistant will be able to understand and speak more than one language at a time. Additionally, we’ll be introducing new phones and a broad range of devices and appliances for the home that support the Assistant from our growing ecosystem of partners in Europe.
Talk to the Google Assistant in multiple languages
Family members in bilingual homes often switch back and forth between languages, and now the Assistant can keep up. With our advancement in speech recognition, you can now speak two languages interchangeably with the Assistant on smart speakers and phones and the Assistant will respond in kind. This is a first-of-its-kind feature only available on the Assistant and is part of our multi-year effort to make your conversations with the Assistant more natural.
If you’re looking for an answer in English, ask, “Hey Google, what’s the weather like today?” If you’re craving tunes from your favorite German hip hop band, just ask “Hey Google, spiele die Fantastischen Vier.” Currently, the Assistant can understand any pair of languages within English, German, French, Spanish, Italian, and Japanese. We’ll be expanding to more languages in the coming months.
A fully connected home
Enjoying home entertainment Listening to music is one of the most popular ways people use the Assistant. That’s why we built the Google Home Max to offer high-fidelity and balanced sound and now it's available in Germany, UK and France—Google Home Max will hit store shelves starting today.
This week, we’re also announcing that the Assistant will be built into new voice-activated speakers, including the Bang & Olufsen’s Beosound 1 and Beosound 2, Blaupunkt’s PVA 100, Harman Kardon’s HK Citation series, Kygo’s Speaker B9-800, Polaroid’s Sam and Buddy and Marshall Acton II and Stanmore II. Expect these smart speakers and soundbars to roll out later this year in local European markets.
Getting things done in the kitchen On the heels of introducing our first ever Smart Displays last month with Lenovo, we’re expanding our offerings with the upcoming launch of JBL’s Link View and LG XBOOM AI ThinQ WK9 in the coming weeks. With these new Smart Displays, you’ll have the perfect kitchen companion. You can use your voice and tap or swipe the screen to follow along with a recipe, control your smart home, watch live TV on YouTube TV, and make video calls with Google Duo. Smart Displays also come integrated with all your favorite Google products services like Google Calendar, Google Maps, Google Photos and YouTube.
Controlling all connected devices in your home The Assistant is also making your home even smarter. Just in the past year, there are now triple the number of home devices and appliances that work with the Assistant in Europe from all the major local brands you’re familiar with.
Our partners will be releasing more devices that work with the Assistant throughout the home in the coming months, including:
Thermostats: tado° Smart Thermostat and Smart Radiator Thermostat, Homematic IP Radiator Thermostate
Security and Smart Home Hubs: Netatmo’s Smart Indoor and Outdoor Security Cameras, TP-Link’s Kasa Cam KC120 and Kasa Cam Outdoor KC200, Smanos K1 SmartHome DIY Security Kit, and Somfy’ TaHoma smart home hub
Lighting: FIBARO Switch, MEDION RGB LED bulb and stripe, and the Nanoleaf Light Panels
Whether you speak German, French, English, Italian, Spanish, you’ll be able to set the temperature, lock the doors, dim the lights and more from a smart speaker and smartphone.
On the go with your phone and headphones
The Google Assistant is expanding on more Android phones and headphones, helping you when you're on the go. Some of the latest flagship devices, including the LG G7 One, SHARP Simple Smartphone 4 and Vivo NEX S, now feature dedicated buttons to easily access the Assistant. In addition, the new Xperia XZ3 from Sony and Blackberry Key 2 LE also take advantage of the shortcuts to trigger the Assistant.
And this week we're announcing that over the coming year, more headphones are on the way, including the JBL Everest GA and LG Tone Platinum, and Earin M-2. When you pair them to your phone, you can talk to the Assistant instantly with just a touch, whether you want to skip a track to hear the next song, get notifications, and respond to your messages, or set reminders.
Phew, that was a lot of news. With lots of new devices and partners coming to Europe, the Google Assistant will be available to help you through every step of your day.
Editor’s note: On the anniversary of the first launch of the Space Shuttle Discovery, we’ll hear from Dr. Ellen R. Stofan, planetary geologist and the John and Adrienne Mars Director of the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, about a new 360 film on board the Shuttle that launched the Hubble Space Telescope.
Since the dawn of spaceflight, only a few hundred people have experienced space firsthand. But since the beginning, there have been moments that captured the world’s imagination and challenged our collective Earth-bound perspective. Of the many orbital endeavors that have made headlines through the decades, one of the most enduring and prolific has been the Hubble Space Telescope.
The Hubble has been called one of the most important single scientific instruments of all time. The data it collected has deepened our understanding of the natural world—from the edge of our solar system to the age of the universe—and the images it has returned have brought the startling beauty of the cosmos to people around the world.
Today, on the 34th anniversary of the Space Shuttle Discovery’s maiden voyage, the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum and Google Arts & Culture have teamed up to bring visitors into the orbiter like never before. Two of the astronauts who helped deliver Hubble to orbit as part of STS-31—Maj Gen Charlie Bolden and Dr. Kathy Sullivan—take us on a 360 journey inside Discovery at the Museum’s Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center.
The video was captured using Google’s Halo camera, and takes us along with the astronauts as they climb aboard the spacecraft together for the first time in 28 years. Charlie and Kathy show us what life in space was like from dawn (they saw 16 sunrises and sunsets each day) to dinnertime (sometimes eaten on the ceiling), and relive the moment they deployed Hubble after years of planning and training.
STS-31 is just one great example of why Discovery was called the champion of the Shuttle fleet—and why it is now on display as part of the Smithsonian’s national collection. Discovery flew every kind of mission the Space Shuttle was designed to fly, from Hubble’s deployment to the delivery and assembly of International Space Station modules and more. Today, we’re celebrating the orbiter’s 39 missions and 365 total days in space with this special immersive film, 15 digital exhibits, virtual tours, and over 200 online artifacts.
The Space Shuttle Discovery_s Maiden Voyage on August 30th 1984.png
The Space Shuttle Discovery's Maiden Voyage on August 30, 1984
A Discovery astronaut services the Hubble Space Telescope.png
A Discovery astronaut services the Hubble Space Telescope
The space shuttle Discovery is the centerpiece of the James S. McDonnell Space Hangar at the National Air and Space Museum_s Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly, Va..png
The space shuttle Discovery is the centerpiece of the James S. McDonnell Space Hangar at the National Air and Space Museum's Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly, Va.
Gregory J. Harbaugh, Joseph R. Tanner_s extravehicular activity crew mate, snapped this photo during the second phase of their walk and the fourth one of five for the STS-82 crew in order to services the Hubble Space Telescope.png
Gregory J. Harbaugh snapped this photo during the STS-82 crew's walk to service the Hubble Space Telescope.
Astronaut Charles F. Bolden In His Flight Suit.png
Astronaut Charles F. Bolden In His Flight Suit
The Space Shuttle Discovery Flies Atop a 747.png
The Space Shuttle Discovery Flies Atop a 747
As we enter a new era of spaceflight in the years ahead—with NASA’s Commercial Crew Program and the development of Hubble’s successor, the James Webb Space Telescope—I hope this new collection demonstrates the remarkable progress we’ve made toward unlocking the mysteries of the universe, and how much farther we can go together. Explore the magic of Discovery Space Shuttle on Google Arts & Culture.
From hurricanes and floods to volcanoes and earthquakes, the Earth is continuously evolving in fits and spurts of dramatic activity. Earthquakes and subsequent tsunamis alone have caused massive destruction in the last decade—even over the course of writing this post, there were earthquakes in New Caledonia, Southern California, Iran, and Fiji, just to name a few.
Earthquakes typically occur in sequences: an initial "mainshock" (the event that usually gets the headlines) is often followed by a set of "aftershocks." Although these aftershocks are usually smaller than the main shock, in some cases, they may significantly hamper recovery efforts. Although the timing and size of aftershocks has been understood and explained by established empirical laws, forecasting the locations of these events has proven more challenging.
We teamed up with machine learning experts at Google to see if we could apply deep learning to explain where aftershocks might occur, and today we’re publishing a paper on our findings. But first, a bit more about how we got here: we started with a database of information on more than 118 major earthquakes from around the world.
A visual representation of the 1992 magnitude 7.3 southern California Landers earthquake where the multi-colored portion represents the initial quake and the red boxes represent aftershock locations.
From there, we applied a neural net to analyze the relationships between static stress changes caused by the mainshocks and aftershock locations. The algorithm was able to identify useful patterns.
The end result was an improved model to forecast aftershock locations and while this system is still imprecise, it’s a motivating step forward. Machine learning-based forecasts may one day help deploy emergency services and inform evacuation plans for areas at risk of an aftershock.
Forecasted distribution of aftershock location probabilities for the Landers earthquake. Dark red colors indicate regions predicted to experience aftershocks. The black dots are the locations of observed aftershocks, and the yellow line shows the faults that ruptured during the mainshock.
There was also an unintended consequence of the research: it helped us to identify physical quantities that may be important in earthquake generation. When we applied neural networks to the data set, we were able to look under the hood at the specific combinations of factors that it found important and useful for that forecast, rather than just taking the forecasted results at face value. This opens up new possibilities for finding potential physical theories that may allow us to better understand natural phenomena.
We are looking forward to seeing what machine learning can do in the future to unravel the mysteries behind earthquakes, in an effort to mitigate their harmful effects.
As the old saying goes, “get a summer job and you’ll stick with it forever.” Just kidding, no one says that. If they did, many of Google’s leaders—who earned their first paychecks serving burgers, planting trees and hawking hair accessories—would be doing something pretty different right now.
If you looked at the resumes of the people leading teams, initiatives and products at Google today, you'd see a wide range of first jobs that, in many cases, taught lessons that still ring true. So as people around the country are wrapping up their seasonal gigs, we asked a few Google leaders about the summer jobs they once had.
Let’s get some fresh air first. Never ones to spend their summers behind a desk, these Googlers got their hard-earned paychecks in the great outdoors. Up in Canada, Partnerships President Don Harrison fought his way through mosquitoes, ticks and bears to plant trees. Further south in Michigan, there were fewer ticks but more kids at Diversity VP Danielle Brown’s lifeguarding gig. And Communications VP Corey DuBrowa clocked 18-hour days on a farm in Oregon, where the wheat and grass seed wasn’t going to harvest itself—no, that was Corey’s job.
Long before Google.org or GOOG, Google.org President Jacquelline Fuller and VP of Investor Relations Ellen West each donned a “polyester rust uniform” and set up shop at the drive-thru under the iconic double arches. For the rest of these Googlers, a summer job meant getting your hands soapy, taking food orders, and getting a crash course in mixology.
Whether selling sleeping bags, fruity drinks or hair accessories, these Googlers started out as young entrepreneurs. Eventually, Kent Walker traded in sleeping bags for legal documents (and now he’s our Chief Legal Officer). Ben Gomes left the Rasna stand to take an internship where he used neural nets to predict KFC chicken demand (before becoming one of Google’s first employees). And long after her scrunchie empire, Ana Corrales ended up in hardware, putting Google’s products in the hands of our customers.
Jeff Dean’s first-ever paying job struck a chord with wedding guests, while Vint Cerf’s interest in automatic coffee makers wasn’t as strong as the java they provided—after that summer, he intensified his studies in math and science. Though these gigs weren’t forever, these Googlers still learned a thing or two.
Early on, these people showed a knack for the careers they’d eventually find at Google. Beyond her duties fetching coffee and handing out mail, Stacy Sullivan's summer job taught her about company structure and how leaders treat employees, setting her up to become Google’s Chief Culture Officer. For Richard Gingras, VP of News Products, the headline was written long ago: He spent a summer stacking and collating newspapers for The Providence Journal.
This year marks the 50th anniversary of the National Trail System, which oversees more than 50,000 miles of trails across the U.S., and makes sure historic sites like the Pacific Crest Trail are around for years to come.
One of the most magical parts of traipsing around the wilderness is the chance to see local fauna: catching a glimpse of a hawk circling a field, floating by a beaver dam on your kayak, or spotting a baby deer in your hometown park.
You can use Google Images to learn more about the wildlife you encounter while hiking: to find out if what you just saw was *really* a coyote, or if that spider whose web you demolished is as scary as it looks. Over the past year, Google image searches for animals have approximately doubled.
We took a look at Google Images trends to find some of the most uniquely searched animals (and bugs!) in each U.S. state. Take a look to find out where you should travel to spy an orca whale, and where to *avoid* if you never want to see a leopard shark in real life.
For those of you planning last-minute nature exploration this summer, we’ve also identified some of the top spots in the U.S. to get your eyes on some wild creatures.
Animal aficionados won’t be surprised that more people are searching for Orcas in Washington, or gila monsters in Arizona. But porcupines in Nebraska, or wolverines in Minnesota? Perhaps not as obvious.
If bugs are your bag, image searches indicate you’re likely to see a butterfly in Hawaii, or black widows (eep) in Colorado. If you’re visiting Iowa, keep your eyes peeled for the elegant, yet still sort of creepy, praying mantis. Check out the complete lists of uniquely searched animals and bugs in each U.S. state.
So where can you go to explore the great outdoors, and maybe catch a glimpse of lions, tigers and bears (oh my)? The top ten trending hikes on Google Maps include the world-famous Appalachian trail, the longest hiking-only trail in America, and the scenic Monument Valley desert, known for its epic rock buttes, plus several other trails across the country.
If you’re willing to spend the night in nature, the top ten trending campgrounds include Mackinaw Mill Creek in Michigan, which lets you set up camp on the shores of one of the Great Lakes. South Carlsbad State Beach in Southern California is set on a bluff overlooking the Pacific Ocean, a short distance from water sports, and maybe some sea life. Just keep an eye out for leopard sharks ;).
Pro tip: Wondering what type of wildflowers you’re seeing on the trail, or if that green bush you hiked through was poison oak? Use Google Lens to help you identify local plant life (or wildlife, if you can catch it standing still … ). Just open the Lens app, point your camera at the plant and Lens will help you identify what you’re looking at.
Now that you're fully informed on how Google can help you learn more about the wildlife around you, get out there and see it for yourself!
Phishing—when an attacker tries to trick you into giving them your credentials—is a common threat to all online users. Google's automated defenses securely block the overwhelming majority of sign-in attempts even if an attacker has your username or password, but we always recommend you enable two-step verification (2SV) to further protect your online accounts.
There are many forms of 2SV—from text (SMS) message codes, to the Google Authenticator app, to hardware second factors like security keys. And while any second factor will greatly improve the security of your account, for those who want the strongest account protection, we’ve long advocated the use of security keys for 2SV.
Today, we’re making it easier to get a security key by making Google’s own Titan Security Keys available on the Google Store.
Titan Security Key
Titan Security Keys have extra “special sauce” from Google—firmware that’s embedded in a hardware chip within the key that helps to verify that the key hasn’t been tampered with. We’ve gone into more detail about how this works on the Google Cloud blog.
To set them up with your Google Account, sign in and navigate to the 2-Step Verification page (see detailed instructions on our help center). Titan Security Keys are also compatible with the Advanced Protection Program, Google's strongest security for users at high risk. And Google Cloud admins can enable security key enforcement in G Suite, Cloud Identity, and Google Cloud Platform to ensure that users use security keys for their accounts.
Editor's note: With Pixelbook and Pixelbook Pen, we’ve seen how tech can enable human creativity in outstanding ways. Mike Perry, an illustrator best known for his work on “Broad City,” recently spoke with us about how he uses Google hardware to stoke his creative process.
Keyword: When did you first start considering yourself an artist?
Mike: I've been drawing since I was a child. I'm not really good at anything else. Luckily it's a functional skill that involves creative problem-solving by thinking about complicated things and how we produce art.
Production is one of my favorite parts about just “making” in general. Like, okay, we have an idea. What do we do with it? We can do anything.
Say you’re starting on a new piece, walk me through that process ...
Ultimately a lot of it just comes from the process of making, right? The pure act of doing it on a regular basis means that I have a very robust catalog of images and ideas and ways of making that all collide and come together in the different ways that they need to.
Every project ends up being different, but really it's the same elements, the same essential bits and pieces coming together to make that thing. And sometimes the ideas are first, other times the process is first.
There's nothing better than accidentally discovering that, you know, if you put glow-in-the-dark pigments into resin, you can make glow-in-the-dark resin. And then all of a sudden, you're like, "That's a process experiment that turns into a really beautiful, accidental discovery."
Now we're thinking, "Okay, well, didn't know you can do that." Well, what else don't we know we can do with resin? How can we play with these things? And then ideas form just because of the process.
How has technology affected your work?
I mean, computers are just crazy tools. We could meticulously go through and take an entire drawing apart piece by piece, and then slowly make each one of those elements come to life in its own right.
That idea is pretty simple and basic, but 10 years ago, that's 200 people with months of time and energy. I've been making stuff long enough and I've been confronted by the technology for long enough that the only way it works for me is if it's just seamless. It's like, oh, I have a pencil—which is really important. And I have a Pixelbook—which is really important. And the weight of those tools is equal because they provide an essential step in the creative process.
When I started doing animation, I didn't necessarily know what I was doing, so I said, "I can draw, so I'll draw one picture, and then I'll just draw another one, and then another one, and hope that it works out." Which was fun. There was a lot of mystery in it. You would spend a week of your life just on the light table, drawing. Tracing over and over, layer after layer. And then you would hit "play" and it would go, "Brruuum." Or be disappointing. You know, like, what have I been doing with my life?
But now, obviously you do it digitally. You can just see everything happens in real life. You're not getting lost in the what-ifs all the time—this stuff is about balance.
Why does everybody love cartoons?
It's visual stimulation. It must trigger some sort of child brain magic point. Who knows why cartoons work? I know why I like them, it’s because they represent the impossible. One of the fun things about being an artist is imagining things that are not possible. Animation is an incredible tool to say, "You know what? I just want this guy to be in space right now," and you just put him in space. You don't have to get on a ship and fly the whole crew to space. We can just do that and it's not a big deal.
Do you ever hit creative roadblocks?
I don't, to be honest. I understand them, I think that there are challenges that need to be met. But it's about the scale of time and understanding that when you hit a roadblock it probably means you're supposed to take a break. We're not machines capable of constantly generating content and material. We need to recharge our existence so we can be creative people. Maybe you encounter a roadblock and you feel this is not gonna work right now. Maybe it takes two months or two hours, whatever that span of time is as long as you remember that tomorrow's another day, you're probably fine.
What do you draw for fun?
I'm a big fan of drawing dogs drinking cocktails, so I think that's, like, my dog drawing niche. I just think that dogs with cocktails are funny.
As you go about your busy day, every minute matters. We’re evolving the design of Wear OS by Google to help you get the most out of your time—providing quicker access to your information and notifications, more proactive help from the Google Assistant, and smarter health coaching—all with a swipe of your finger.
Easier access to notifications and more
We’re making it easier to browse, dismiss or take action on your notifications with the new notification stream. Simply swipe up to see all your notifications at once. See an important message? Just tap to select a built-in smart reply without even leaving your stream. Swipe down on your watch to get quicker access to handy features and shortcuts like Google Pay or ‘Find my phone’.
More proactive help from your Google Assistant
With the new design, you can now receive proactive and personalized help from your Google Assistant. Let’s say you’re headed to the airport—swipe right on your watch to see your flight status or hotel reservation. Tap on smart suggestions like the weather at your destination or find a restaurant near your hotel. When you’re getting ready for the day, your Google Assistant will help you stay ahead by reminding you to bring an umbrella, showing you your day’s meetings, or warning you if there is a delay on your commute. The Google Assistant will also suggest features you may not have tried yet and will become more helpful over time as it gets to know you and as we add new features.
Smarter health coaching
Last week, we announced that Google Fit is making it easier to be healthy with two new activity goals: Heart Points and Move Minutes. We worked with the American Heart Association and the World Health Organization to design these goals based on their physical activity recommendations which are shown to have health benefits for your heart and mind. Now, you can simply swipe left to start a workout or see how you are tracking toward your goals.
We’ll begin rolling out these new features over the next month, so look out for updates on your Wear OS by Google smartwatch. Some features may vary by phone OS, watch or country.
I was eight years old when my dad took me to my first Indianapolis 500, one of the most prestigious car races in the world. It was unlike anything I’d ever experienced before—the track was buzzing with hundreds of thousands of loyal fans overshadowed only by the sound of the cars speeding by. The excitement was contagious and the sheer power of the race cars is otherworldly. From then on, I’ve attended nearly every race with my Dad. As a “Hoosier,” born and raised in Indiana, I’ve always felt a connection to this event—steeped in tradition and alive with fans like me who return every year and sing “Back home again in Indiana.”
Indy1
Sitting in a race car before the race (May 2002)
Indy2
Hanging in Pit Lane (May 2010)
Indy3
In the garage with IndyCar team owner Sam Schmidt (May 2016)
While the true feeling of the Indy 500 can only be experienced in person, I wanted to bring a taste of it to people who have never been and to those who want to revisit their past experiences there. I work in the Global Business Organization at Google, so I reached out to our Street View team to see if we could bring the track to Google Maps. They sent a Street View Camera around the track just moments before the green flag was waved, and 3 months later, it’s on Street View for all to enjoy. Starting today, you can take a spin around the infamous Indianapolis Motor Speedway and get closer to the action on your phone or computer.
Creative, talented employees have awesome ideas, but chances are they rarely have enough time to actually try them out and find out which ones are worth pursuing. To allow their imagination to run free and spur creative innovation, companies need to create space and opportunities for employees to try out crazy new proposals. That’s why every so often, we regularly set aside some time to build a small, ad-hoc team around an idea, brainstorm, design, hack and share what we discovered.
A hackathon shifts the routine, gets people out of their comfort zone, and allows decisions to be made quickly. It creates new leadership opportunities, a chance to experiment, and an invitation to innovate. For our teams it’s also resulted in new products, new applications of emerging technologies, and important new cross-team collaborations. While not every hackathon will result in new products or features, we always find value in the learning and exploring that occurs.
Here are our tips for setting up a successful hackathon at your workplace:
Get support from your management and executive leadership.
A hackathon requires asking people to set aside their normal work for a few days (or a whole week) and that will impact the short-term ability to progress toward quarterly or annual goals. Make sure your leadership actively support the hackathon and its goals, so the team isn’t getting mixed messages about the trade-offs involved.
Your leaders also need to set the scene for the hackathon itself: what’s our goal for this hackathon, and what is expected from participants? This is a perfect time to emphasize the opportunity for risk-taking, crazy ideas, new technology experiments and creativity. A hackathon gives leaders the opportunity to empower the team to make decisions, tackle problems in new ways, and fail spectacularly.
Some of those failures can teach you more about your own process, infrastructure and tooling than successful efforts might—allowing the entire organization to become more efficient and productive. In other words, hackathons may only result in learning, not fantastic new product ideas; it’s a gamble, but a good one to take.
Get the right people in the room.
The magic of a hackathon is it encourages your teams to mix and work with new people, so they aren’t just coding with the folks they work with every day. Gather experts in a variety of relevant subject areas (machine learning, privacy, cloud storage, mobile development, etc.) to act as advisors and technology problem solvers, so teams don’t burn time trying to learn new technology from scratch.
Organize, organize, organize.
Organizing and running the hackathon takes its own big chunk of work. We set aside one or two large spaces for presentations and team formation. We set up an internal website to gather information and publicize, and get fun swag items that encourage participation and act as mementos or trophies. In the end we evaluate projects by voting, and award prizes to the top teams.
Real collaboration happens best face to face, and everyone being in the same room allows for free-flowing conversation. We’ve usually coordinate simultaneous hackathons at multiple different office sites, to minimize travel time and open up participation to folks on the greater team, regardless of their location.
Prepare your hackers by giving prompts in advance.
We’ve found a variety of prompts and brainstorming exercises to help leading up to the hackathon, so people can hit the ground running when the week starts. For example, you can ask people to finish the sentences:
I wish I could …
How might we …
If only I could take time to fix …
It’s such a pain that …
Wouldn’t it be better for everyone if …
These prompts can help push people to think outside their normal scope of work. They might experiment with changes to commonly used processes or tools, or try to solve an existing business problem in a totally novel way. We sometimes see teams organize around work that removes a cumbersome task they have to do but don’t want to, or something they can’t do but wish they could.
You may want to schedule tech talks in the week or two before the hackathon, to get people thinking or inspire new ideas. These can cover new technologies you want to explore (augmented reality, deep learning, new wireless protocols), unsolved problems that need attention, or basics of a platform or piece of infrastructure that’s likely to be used by many teams.
Next up
I’ll be back with part two next week, covering advice for forming groups, sharing ideas and showcasing the results of your time hacking.
Empty homes are more vulnerable to being burglarized, and it’s important to have a system in place that can monitor, alter and deter crime while you’re away. That’s where the Google Assistant can step in and help you keep an eye on everything at home.
We worked some of the most trusted home security brands to launch new devices that work with the Assistant.
Monitor your home 24/7. There are many security cameras and lights out there that work with the Assistant to help you keep an eye on your home while you’re away. With the new Arlo Security Lights, you can get instant alerts when motion is detected or pair the lights with Arlo security cameras. There are also several cameras, such as the Nest Cam, for the interior and exterior of your home that stream 24/7 and can be checked by simply asking the Google Assistant on the app. And with any Nest Cam model, you can also ask Assistant to stream live feeds onto Chromecast-enabled televisions. If there’s an intruder, talk and listen through the camera to scare them off. Lock from anywhere.Smart locks allow you to lock and unlock your door from anywhere in the world, making it easy for you to monitor your doorstep while you’re away. Beginning tomorrow we’ll launch a new integration with the Nest x Yale Lock.You can use the Assistant to check the status of your lock, remotely lock it, and even include it in a Routine. For example you can lock the door automatically before going to bed by saying “Hey Google, goodnight.” Additionally, with the recent integrations of the Assistant with the August Smart Lock, Schlage® Sense Smart Deadbolt, and Sesame Lock by Candy House, you can share access with trusted friends and family and lock the door with your voice. You’ll also get an alert whenever someone locks or unlocks the door. Keep your home secure. Security systems aren’t new but “smart” security systems are. ADT Pulse, Honeywell’s new Smart Home Security solution and Nest Secure alarm system will let you know what’s happening at your home while you’re gone. If the alarm goes off, you’ll get an alert on your phone with information about what triggered the alarm. Silence the alarm through the apps and alert the police.
With these new security devices, your now have an easy way to protect your home with the Google Assistant.
