Google search now supports Cherokee (ᏣᎳᎩ)

With the help of Cherokee Nation staff and community members, we’ve added Cherokee (ᏣᎳᎩ) as an interface language on Google, making a small contribution towards preserving one of the world’s endangered languages.

You can now select Cherokee as your default from the Language Tools page (available from the right of the search box), and the entire Google interface will transform into Cherokee:

We’ve also included an on-screen Cherokee keyboard on the search page through the Google Virtual Keyboard API. This makes it easier for people to search web content in Cherokee without a physical Cherokee keyboard. To access the keyboard, simply click the icon at the right side of the search box.

Cherokee is an Iroquoian language spoken by the Cherokee people. The Cherokee syllabary writing system was developed by Sequoyah in the early 19th century. He realized the power of writing systems, and wanted his people to benefit from that power. Some of the 85 characters he developed for his syllabary were modified from his original handwritten script for a printing press in the 1820s, resulting in characters that resemble Latin and Greek letters. Despite the resemblance, they are pronounced differently. The modified script was quickly adapted for printing Cherokee newspapers, books and pamphlets. The adoption and use of the script enabled the Cherokee people to maintain their language and culture. Today, Cherokee is spoken mostly in the states of Oklahoma and North Carolina. (The Cherokee Nation is the sovereign operating government of the Cherokee people. It is a federally recognized tribe of more than 300,000 Cherokee citizens, with its capital located in Tahlequah, Okla. To learn more, please visit www.cherokee.org.)

We’re honored to have the opportunity to continue this tradition, and we’d like to thank the Cherokee Nation for working with us to translate the interface for Google search into Cherokee.

Search is now available in 146 interface languages—and the list is growing. If you speak an endangered language that you would like us to support, please sign up for Google in Your Language and submit community translations.

Update 10:26 AM: You can find the press release from the Cherokee Nation here.

Posted by ᏇᎩ (Craig Cornelius), Software Engineer, Internationalization

20 percent time spent coding in the clouds

This is the latest post in our series profiling entrepreneurial Googlers working on products across the company and around the world—even 35,000 feet above the ground. Read how one engineering director tried Google App Engine for the first time to build an Android app—now used by nearly half a million people—during a 12-hour plane ride to Japan. -Ed.

A 12-hour plane flight may seem daunting to some, but I look at it as uninterrupted time to do what I love—code new products. My bi-monthly trips from London to Tokyo and California are how I spend my 20 percent time—what I consider my “license to innovate.” It was on a flight to Tokyo that I first built what became Chrome to Phone, an Android app and Chrome extension that allows you to instantly send content—like a webpage, map or YouTube video—from your Chrome browser to your Android device.

As an engineering director, I spend the bulk of my time managing software engineers and various projects. As a result, there’s not a lot of time to just sit at my desk and code, and it’s possible for my technical skills to become rusty. So on one of my frequent cross-continent trips, I decided to take the opportunity—and time—to brush up on my engineering skills by exploring device-to-device interaction, an area that has a lot of potential in our increasingly connected world. I’d never written a Chrome extension or used App Engine, a platform that allows developers to build web applications on the same scalable systems that power Google’s own applications and services. But rather than sleeping or reading a book, I spent my flight figuring it out. And somewhere over Belgium on my way to Japan, I had a working prototype of Chrome to Phone.

A few days later, on my trip back to London, I emailed my prototype to Andy Rubin and Linus Upson, who lead the Android and Chrome engineering teams. Before my plane even landed, they’d both given the product their blessing. With a little help from a developer in Mountain View and a user interface designer back in London, we tidied things up and ultimately launched the open source code for Chrome to Phone at Google I/O just two months later.



As an engineering director, I don’t always have the time to get deeply involved in every aspect of a product launch. Chrome to Phone gave me a unique opportunity to be actively involved at the grassroots of product development at Google—from concept to launch—working directly with the legal, internationalization and consumer operations teams. With few restrictions on how I spent my time, I was able to build a prototype and launch it quickly, adding more features based on user feedback. Today, more than 475,000 people use the extension, and that number is still growing.

When you’re leaving your house to go out, you take your phone, keys and wallet. I don’t think it will be long before you just take your phone—it will contain everything that you need—and that’s our motivation to explore device-to-device interaction. In order to get there, we have engineers here in the U.K. and around the world examining the mobile space, both in their full-time roles and as 20 percent projects. There isn’t only one solution, so by encouraging engineers to work on new projects, we hope that ideas will come from all over the world—whether from a Google office or even 35,000 feet above one.

Posted by Dave Burke, Engineering Director, Android

Watch Lady Gaga’s exclusive Q&A with Google

(Cross-posted from the YouTube Blog)

Google went totally Gaga yesterday, when the indomitable artist otherwise known as Stefani Germanotta clicked onto the Mountain View, Calif. campus in her impossibly tall black boots.

The diminutive superstar wowed a capacity crowd in a venue that was (literally) packed to the rafters with adoring Googlers. In a wide-ranging interview that saw Gaga taking questions from fans via Twitter and Moderator, the musician spoke about everything from bullying to Rebecca Black, the creative process and her upcoming album. She took questions from the audience—hugging several Googlers in the process—and even became a judge when a gaggle of Gaga-alikes flooded the stage.

True to form, the singer was by turns funny, thoughtful and inspiring. But don’t take our word for it—you can watch the entire Q&A now on YouTube.



Posted by Sarah Bardeen, Music Community Manager, YouTube

2011 European Scholarship for Students with Disabilities: results announced

(Cross-posted from the Google Students Blog)

We're pleased to announce the winners of the second annual European Scholarship for Students with Disabilities. This scholarship gives recognition to outstanding scientific contributions from students with disabilities who are pursuing university degrees in the field of computer science at a university in the European Union, Switzerland or Israel. It aims to help break barriers that keep students with disabilities from entering computing and encourages them to excel in their studies and become active role models and leaders in creating technology.

Scholarships will be granted for the 2011-2012 academic year, and recipients will be invited to attend an all-expenses-paid retreat at Google’s Engineering Center in Zurich in June 2011. The retreat includes workshops with a series of speakers, panels, breakout sessions and social activities.

This year we received almost double the amount of applications compared to 2010 and have increased the number of scholars from seven to 10.

Congratulations to our scholars!

Aurora Constantin, The University Of Edinburgh, United Kingdom

Celine Moret, University Of Geneva, Switzerland

Lewis McLean, Heriot-Watt University, United Kingdom

Max Hinne, Radboud University Nijmegen, Netherlands

Nicolas Bellm, Heidelberg University, Germany

Peter Gatens, University Of Liverpool, United Kingdom

Peter Weller, Aberystwyth University, United Kingdom

Polina Proutskova Goldsmiths, University of London, United Kingdom

Sophie Kershaw, University of Oxford, United Kingdom

Thomas Hennigan, University Of Southampton, United Kingdom

For complete details, see www.google.com/studentswithdisabilities-europe. To learn more about scholarships, grants and other opportunities for students in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, visit www.google.com/university/emea.

Posted by Jenny McColl, Univeristy Programs Specialist, EMEA

1000 @Google Talks videos now on YouTube

Last week, the @Google Talks team uploaded its 1000th video to YouTube. If you’re not familiar with this series, we host talks by authors and commentators at Google, and post videos of their readings and talks on a dedicated YouTube channel.

Authors@Google began in the fall of 2005 when we noticed that some amazing people were passing through the Google hallways. A few scrappy Googlers galvanized to create a more consistent pipeline of requests and a formalized program that kicked off with Malcolm Gladwell and James Surowiecki. As Google and our technology grew, so did the program. “Authors@Google” has blossomed into @Google Talks, a full-fledged speaker series, expanded across distributed offices and found a home on YouTube, so that we can share these conversations outside of the Googleplex.

The @Google Talks series aims to capture the popular and intellectual zeitgeist, as well as ideas that deserve a deeper focus an expert can provide in more than a five-minute soundbite. From the 2008 U.S. presidential candidates to Alice Walker to Michael Pollan to Raphael Saadiq, the program has grown to encompass not just authors, but musicians, innovators, notable women, chefs and more. The team that hosts these events is made up of dedicated and passionate volunteers from all across the company.

Our most viral video was of Conan O'Brien, who stopped by during his "Legally Prohibited from Being Funny on Television" tour for a hilarious hour involving bagpipes, Andy Richter and one lucky Googler who got to touch his hair. We've featured master and apprentice—from Thomas Keller of The French Laundry to Keller protege Corey Lee on the process of opening his new restaurant Benu—and varying viewpoints, exemplified by Christopher Hitchens on "God Is Not Great" and Tim Keller on "The Reason for God." And that’s just the beginning. Other popular visitors include Congressman Ron Paul, President Barack Obama, linguist and philosopher Noam Chomsky, presentation designer Garr Reynolds, author Elizabeth Gilbert, Randall Munroe of XKCD and U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

We’re excited for what lies ahead, and we hope you'll tune in and join us.

Posted by Erika Choung, @Google Talks Volunteer

Sprint integrates Google Voice

(Cross-posted from the Google Voice Blog)

Over time, we've worked to bring an integrated Google Voice experience to your mobile device by building mobile apps, introducing Google Voice Lite, and most recently Number Porting. But we felt that ultimately, the most simple solution would be to partner with carriers to seamlessly integrate Google Voice with your mobile phone.

Today, we’d like to share that we’ve teamed up with Sprint to do just that.

First, Sprint customers will be able to use their existing Sprint mobile number as their Google Voice number and have it ring multiple other phones simultaneously. So now, calls to your Sprint mobile number can easily be answered from your office or your home phone, or even your computer through Gmail. Calls from Gmail and text messages sent from google.com/voice will also display your Sprint number. This basically gives Sprint customers all the benefits of Google Voice without the need to change or port their number.

Alternatively, Google Voice users can choose to replace their Sprint number with their Google Voice number when placing calls or sending text messages from their Sprint handset. This feature works on all Sprint phones and gives Sprint users all the benefits of Google Voice without the need for an app.

In both cases, Google Voice replaces Sprint voicemail, giving Sprint customers transcribed voicemail messages available online and sent via email and/or text message. International calls made from Google Voice users’ Sprint phones will be connected by Google Voice at our very low rates, and Sprint customers will also have access to the rest of Google Voice’s features, like creating personalized voicemail greetings based on who’s calling, call recording, blocking unwanted callers and more.

To learn more, watch the video below and visit google.com/voice/sprint.



This feature will be available soon to Sprint customers in the United States. Once it is launched, it will be rolled out gradually to all Google Voice users, and can be enabled through the Google Voice website. If you don’t see it right away, don’t worry—you can leave your email address at google.com/voice/sprint and we’ll notify you as soon as this becomes available.

In addition, today we’re introducing the Nexus S 4G for Sprint—which takes advantage of Sprint’s high-speed 4G data network and lets you enable Google Voice directly from the mobile app. Learn more on the Google Mobile Blog.

Posted by Jacob Hesch, Software Engineer

National Engineers Week 2011: Classroom visits inspire students to pursue CS

We love using our computer science (CS) and engineering skills to solve some of world’s most interesting and important problems. We also know that not enough students are pursuing careers in CS and that the U.S. currently has a 3-to-1 gap for computer and mathematical sciences jobs (that’s three job openings for every job seeker). So this year, for National Engineers Week, Google engineers across the country visited local middle schools and high schools to talk to more than 5,000 students about their own careers in computer science.

Instead of hosting students at Google for National Engineers Week as we’ve done in the past, this year we traveled to local communities to talk to the students on their own turf. Engineers Week fell during spring break in many areas, so we spread our school visits throughout the month of March.

As part of this event, I visited Odle Middle School in Bellevue, Washington with four other engineers from our Kirkland office. We split up into 16 different classrooms during the day, and talked about the importance of basic programming skills for all the sciences (it’s not just for CS majors!) before moving on to activities related to programming and algorithmic thinking (searching and sorting). It was a lot of fun to interact with the students—and we all left with a greater appreciation for the work that the teachers perform every day.

One of the engineers in our group is Japanese (his friends and family are fortunately all safe) and he gave a particularly resonant example of how CS can have a big impact. After the recent earthquake, geologists used computer models to predict where and when tsunamis were likely to hit coastal regions. This information was used to send warnings and direct resources where they were needed most. The speed and accuracy of these warnings is a credit to the scientists who combined their knowledge of geology with their programming expertise to produce these life-saving programs.

We really care about encouraging students to pursue careers in all the sciences (including computer science). By introducing students to interesting people who work in computer science, we hope we can inspire them to develop their own skills in this area.

Posted by Gary Kacmarcik, Software Engineer