Celebrate World Book Day with The Literacy Project

Filed under: Official Google Blog — Wrote by Lees on Friday, May 16th, 2008 @ 11:09 am

Posted by Anne Meyer, Chief of
Education Design, CAST

According to UNESCO, one in five adults is illiterate, with the
majority living in the developing world—where access to books,
libraries, and education is often limited. But the barrier to
literacy isn’t simply a question of access, nor is it limited to
the developing world. It’s a problem we see in the U.S. as well.
People may struggle to read for lots of reasons. Some of these have
to do with basic literacy skills, such as inadequate
vocabulary.

Sometimes readers have trouble "decoding" what that
string of letters on a page really means–they might have reading
disabilities, for example. Readers may not have enough background
knowledge about a story’s characters, geography, or culture.

At the Center for Applied Special
Technology (CAST)
, an educational nonprofit near Boston, we
have spent the past two decades working to leverage the potential
of personal, digital technologies to customize educational media to
meet individual needs. In celebration of World Book Day, CAST has
created a powerful new tool, id="b1_635" >UDL Editions, that showcases how
classic and sometimes difficult texts—such as Shakespeare’s 18th
Sonnet and Jack London’s Call of
the Wild—can be rendered in smart, reader-friendly ways to
provide a whole host of learning supports—such as multimedia
glossaries, chapter summaries, and read-aloud features, links to
Google Maps to place settings in contemporary contexts.

The books are one of the href="http://www.google.com/literacy/projects.html" >many
projects being featured starting today on href="http://google.com/literacy"
>The Literacy Project
, a joint
effort by Google, LitCam, and UNESCO’s Institute for Lifelong
Learning. The project encourages literacy and reading organisations
from around the globe to connect and share materials and best
practice—from a searchable maps database to e-learning tools—like
PlanetRead’s same-language subtitling videos—that can be used in
the classroom.

We’re really excited to be participating in the project. Come join
us on the site and href="http://www.google.com/support/literacy/bin/request.py" >share
your thoughts!

href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/blogspot/MKuf?a=cvnsEeG" > border="0" />

height="1" width="1" />

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Why data matters

Filed under: Official Google Blog — Wrote by Lees on Sunday, May 4th, 2008 @ 2:32 am

Posted by Hal Varian, Chief
Economist

We often use this space to discuss how we

href="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/search/label/privacy"
id="irrh" >treat user data and protect privacy
. With the post
below, we're beginning an occasional series that discusses how
we harness the data we collect to improve our products and services
for our users. We think it's appropriate to start with a post
describing how data has been critical to the advancement of search
technology. - Ed.

Better data makes for better science. The history of information
retrieval illustrates this principle well.

Work in this area began in the early days of computing, with simple
document retrieval based on matching queries with words and phrases
in text files. Driven by the availability of new data sources,
algorithms evolved and became more sophisticated. The arrival of
the web presented new challenges for search, and now it is common
to use information from web links and many other indicators as
signals of relevance.

Today's web search algorithms are trained to a large degree by
the "wisdom of the crowds" drawn from the logs of
billions of previous search queries. This brief overview of the
history of search illustrates why using data is integral to making
Google web search valuable to our users.

A brief history of search

Nowadays search is a hot topic, especially with the widespread use
of the web, but the history of document search dates back to the
1950s. Search engines existed in those ancient times, but their
primary use was to search a static collection of documents. In the
early 60s, the research community gathered new data by digitizing
abstracts of articles, enabling rapid progress in the field in the
60s and 70s. But by the late 80s, progress in this area had slowed
down considerably.

In order to stimulate research in information retrieval, the
National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) launched the
>Text Retrieval Conference
(TREC) in 1992. TREC introduced new data in the form of full-text
documents and used human judges to classify whether or not
particular documents were relevant to a set of queries. They
released a sample of this data to researchers, who used it to train
and improve their systems to find the documents relevant to a new
set of queries and compare their results to TREC's human
judgments and other researchers' algorithms.

The TREC data revitalized research on information retrieval. Having
a standard, widely available, and carefully constructed set of data
laid the groundwork for further innovation in this field. The
yearly TREC conference fostered collaboration, innovation, and a
measured dose of competition (and bragging rights) that led to
better information retrieval.

New ideas spread rapidly, and the algorithms improved. But with
each new improvement, it became harder and harder to improve on
last year's techniques, and progress eventually slowed down
again.

And then came the web. In its beginning stages, researchers used
industry-standard algorithms based on the TREC research to find
documents on the web. But the need for better search was
apparent–now not just for researchers, but also for everyday
users—and the web gave us lots of new data in the form of links
that offered the possibility of new advances.

There were developments on two fronts. On the commercial side, a
few companies started offering web search engines, but no one was
quite sure what business models would work.

On the academic side, the National Science Foundation started a
"Digital Library Project" which made grants to several
universities. Two Stanford grad students in computer science named
Larry Page and Sergey Brin worked on this project. Their insight
was to recognize that existing search algorithms could be
dramatically improved by using the special linking structure of web
documents. Thus href="http://www.google.com/technology/" id="lv1x"
>PageRank was born.

How Google uses data

PageRank offered a significant improvement on existing algorithms
by ranking the relevance of a web page not by keywords alone but
also by the quality and quantity of the sites that linked to it. If
I have six links pointing to me from sites such as the Wall
Street Journal
, New York Times, and the House of
Representatives, that carries more weight than 20 links from my old
college buddies who happen to have web pages.

Larry and Sergey initially tried to license their algorithm to some
of the newly formed web search engines, but none were interested.
Since they couldn't sell their algorithm, they decided to start
a search engine themselves. The rest of the story is
well-known.

Over the years, Google has continued to invest in making search
better. Our information retrieval experts have added more than 200
additional signals to the algorithms that determine the relevance
of websites to a user's query.

So where did those other 200 signals come from? What's the next
stage of search, and what do we need to do to find even more
relevant information online?

We're href="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2006/04/this-is-test-this-is-only-test.html"
id="a9t." >constantly
experimenting with our algorithm, tuning and tweaking on a
weekly basis to come up with more relevant and useful results for
our users.

But in order to come up with new ranking techniques and evaluate if
users find them useful, we have to store and analyze search logs.
(Watch our href="http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=ECB20E29232BCBBA"
id="d36_" >videos to see exactly what
data we store in our logs.) What results do people click on? How
does their behavior change when we change aspects of our algorithm?
Using data in the logs, we can compare how well we're doing now
at finding useful information for you to how we did a year ago. If
we don't keep a history, we have no good way to evaluate our
progress and make improvements.

To choose a simple example: the Google spell checker is based on
our analysis of user searches compiled from our logs — not a
dictionary. Similarly, we've had a lot of success in using
query data to improve our information about geographic locations,
enabling us to provide better local search.

Storing and analyzing logs of user searches is how Google's
algorithm learns to give you more useful results. Just as data
availability has driven progress of search in the past, the data in
our search logs will certainly be a critical component of future
breakthroughs.

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An appreciation of Arthur C. Clarke

Filed under: Official Google Blog — Wrote by Lees on Sunday, May 4th, 2008 @ 2:28 am

Posted by Vint Cerf, Chief Internet
Evangelist, and Bill Coughran, Senior VP, Engineering

"Any sufficiently advanced
technology is indistinguishable from magic.
" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarke's_three_laws"
id="n:2z" >(Clarke's Third Law)

How do you summarize a man like href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_C._Clarke"
id="z0vx" >Arthur C. Clarke? The 90-year-old futurist and
science fiction writer, who

href="http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/1.03/clarke.html"
id="gh5." >described himself as a "serial processor"
,
died yesterday in Sri Lanka, his long-time home. Among the authors
of the Golden Age of the genre in the 1950s, Clarke is a giant
whose creative ideas have found purchase in the real world — most
notably the notion of a

href="http://lakdiva.org/clarke/1945ww/" id="x9hu" >synchronous
communication satellite
, which he envisioned in 1945, but which
did not become a reality for 20 more years.

Clarke's href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Deep_Range" id="f8sr" >The
Deep Range
(1957) painted a world economy that harvested the
bounty of the sea and incorporated humans adapted to that
environment. In his earlier works, there is a strong scientific
element that lends credibility to the worlds he envisioned. His
more recent work has added more deeply philosophical themes. Clarke
is probably best known for his book and co-authorship with Stanley
Kubrick of the screenplay for the epochal

href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2001:_A_Space_Odyssey_(film)"
id="a8v6" >2001: A Space Odyssey
and the sequels to that
cultural milestone — but his two most compelling contributions may
be the ability to envision worlds and societies based on premises
other than our own, and his dramatic and effective advocacy of
science and technology.

He has not squandered celebrity, but used his iconic status to draw
public attention to things of href="http://www.clarkefoundation.org/about/accfmission.php"
id="hq-z" >global importance. We owe him gratitude not only for
his remarkable talent for cerebral entertainment, but also his
exceptional ability to make us think. Especially noteworthy now is
this 9-minute video, which he prepared on his 90th birthday last
December — as usual, rich with forward-thinking ideas.

width="425"> value="http://www.youtube.com/v/3qLdeEjdbWE&hl=en" /> type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent"
height="355" width="425" />

Not a few Googlers are who they are today because his work has been
a source of inspiration and aspiration. We take a tiny bit of pride
in the fact that Google is a "sufficiently advanced
technology" that will make it easy for millions of people to
find him.

Perhaps the most fitting summary of his life, paraphrasing the
famous Vulcan greeting, is that he lived long and prospered! May
his views continue to inspire for eons.

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Google’s (and parents’) role in keeping kids safe online

Filed under: Official Google Blog — Wrote by Lees on Wednesday, December 12th, 2007 @ 2:05 am

Posted by Vint Cerf, Chief Internet
Evangelist

We know that technologies like the "v-chip" can be used
to keep kids from seeing inappropriate content on TV. And while
technology has an important role to play in protecting kids online,
it's as important that parents implant a symbolic
"v-chip" in their children's minds to guide them when
it comes to deciding what online content is and is not
appropriate.

That was one of the observations I shared this week at the href="http://www.fosi.org/"
id="n4.j" >Family Online Safety Institute's conference in
Washington, D.C. The Internet provides an amazing opportunity for
young people to express themselves creatively and access immense
quantities of useful information. Kids are using geospatial, mobile
and social networking technologies, for example, to learn in new,
interactive ways. The Internet also provides unparalleled
opportunities for free expression, enabling kids and adults alike
to deliver tremendous benefit to society by voicing sometimes
unpopular, inconvenient, or controversial opinions.

At the same time, there is some online content and activity that is
unsuitable for younger users. Google is dedicated to supporting
parents' efforts to educate and protect their children when
they go online. We've invested in developing family safety
tools that empower parents to limit what online content their
children can discover. Our href="http://www.google.com/help/customize.html#safe"
id="mr5-" >SafeSearch filter, which users can adjust to block
explicit content from their search results, is an example of this
type of technology.

On id="f.y-" >YouTube, where we host user-generated content, we aim
to offer a community for free expression that is suitable for
children and protects them from exploitation. Our work to keep
YouTube safe for children includes href="http://www.youtube.com/t/community_guidelines"
id="e886" >clear policies about what is and is not acceptable on
the site; robust mechanisms to enforce these policies, such as easy
tools for users to police the content by flagging inappropriate
videos; innovative product features that enable safe behavior; and
YouTube href="http://www.youtube.com/t/safety" id="emco" >safety
tips.

We've also partnered with child safety organizations, including
href="http://www.commonsensemedia.org/" id="fu1r" >CommonSense
Media, id="x1md" >i-Safe, href="http://www.ikeepsafe.org/" id="iliq" >iKeepSafe, href="http://www.netfamilynews.org/"
id="rc.q" >NetFamilyNews, and, of course, the Family Online
Safety Institute to increase awareness about online child safety.
In addition, we cooperate with law enforcement and industry
partners to combat child exploitation and help minimize the
uploading of illegal content, offering training and technical
assistance to law enforcement officials and providing groups like
the National Center For Missing and Exploited Children with
technology tools to help them be more effective in their
work.

Keeping children safe on the Web is the shared responsibility of
parents and families, educators, industry, and government. We have
a shared responsibility to help teach children the media literacy
skills they need to become savvy online and offline information
consumers and, working together, we believe this goal is
attainable. height="1" width="1" />

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The search of Web2.0 times

Filed under: Yahoo Search — Wrote by Lees on Monday, November 26th, 2007 @ 11:40 pm

Author: Chief inspector of Zhang Qin product

The arrival of Web2.0 times, what can you bring to search engine? I think the most important is to provide a kind of new content source, namely the content that the user creates (User Generated Content, UGC of the following abbreviation) .

The network effect that UGC has a kind of community spy to have (Network Effect) . Be in the United States, the growth of a lot of websites is very rapid, produced this kind of specific effect of community website adequately namely. Network effect is reflected in, the user that should join community is more, contributive content is more, every user gets benefit also is jumped over tall; And, when community user number and content quantity obtain quantity of a crucial point (Critical Mass) after inflection point, website user is counted and the acceleration of several growth meets content to greaten gradually, till final hasten delay.

To search engine, UGC is not a simple card on traditional sense, the customer of a rich that perhaps keeps, it includes two parts content at least: It is socialization media above all (Social Media, the concept that here media is broad sense) , you can upload your photograph, or video of a paragraph of DV. Next, founding this content when the user while, also can all alone to search engine provides a lot of new auxiliary data, the metadata that often says namely (Meta Data) , these metropolises are alled alone by search engine place is used.

The United States ” news weekly ” there once was a famed cover implied meaning April this year, caption cries ” the Internet that is a center with us ” (Putting The ‘ We ‘ In ‘ Web ‘) . The flying development that the is core with UGC namely Web 2.0 site that the article describes is in the United States, more typical case isMySpace, FlickrAndYouTube.

What I lift an example to come to those who show Web 2.0 community website grow is fast. The photograph that Flickr is an abroad shares a website (note: ” news weekly ” the author that magazine cover photograph is Flickr: Stewart Butterfield and Caterina Fake couple) . Flickr is the small website that Stewart builds for wife Caterina only at first, but the user as the website is increasing, and website itself takes the user seriously of the experience highly, public praise effect and network effect get be reflectinged stage by stage, development is very rapid. March 2005, flickrBe bought by Yahoo. After 1 year, it every day PV is in 20 million above, grow 4 compared to the same period times; The month visits user number to be in independently 12 million above, grow 9 compared to the same period times; And the amount of photograph label accumulative total has been achieved 260 million. This development speed is quite breathtaking.

The occurrence of Web2.0 website, can produce the effect of essential sex to netizen lifestyle. The stickiness of Web2.0 website is very strong, they and traditional portal site are different, user feature is more apparent. This is an analysis of American Internet online behavior August, everybody can see, be in right next horn, the portal site that is a tradition (include Yahoo, MSN and AOL) , they are the site that often uses among netizen life, the day number that body visits them every months in the netizen now is maximum, keep above time every day the longest, the webpage amount of the visit is maximum also. Among lower part is search engine (Google) , the user is very tall also to its visit frequency, but retention period is the briefest. Wrong upper part is new occurrence Web2.0 website (MySpace, facebook and Cragslist) , although the netizen is right,these websites use frequency every months opposite at the portal not tall, the user visits these websites impossibly every day, but the stickiness of these websites wants far outclass to search engine and portal, the growth of UGC whole is very breathtaking.

We will see the progress of Chinese Internet. Graph of this piece of trend combined the statistical data that Ai Rui and CNNIC release, our country now broadband user year the growth that increase rate outstrips integral netizen, the broadband has made the online way of a mainstream. To the end of 2007, internet permeability will be achieved 12% , among them broadband user scale is as high as 63% . We also see, because of the growth of netizen amount, with the addition of netizen online experience, add a broadband gain ground, of domestic and international VC a large number of gathering, make website of this kind of Web2.0 is in UGC development rate of China is very rapid. Among this although a lot of websites are right of foreign trade pattern duplicate, but the meeting after believing period of time chooses through the market truly ecbolic an a few valuable Web2.0 website.

As a result of diversity feature of the netizen, prospective community cannot be a website alone big, build a diverse community by different website however, will satisfy different user and application. It is from community user in light of the scale among whole netizen, this growth is very fast. Arrive to did not come from 2005 2010, integral netizen amount and community user number rise in year after year. To 2010, number of domestic community user will be achieved 140 million, the netizen that exceeds 6 to become will become the member of community. So much netizen, community user of so much, bring engine of all alone giving search what kind of change. Differ with traditional website stationmaster or the content that edit dominant, the many UGC that community user creates will bring double property, its are subjective with personalized colour will stronger.

Will look from this meaning, web2.0 will bring a socialization to search (Social Search) times. The course that search engine development is below pursues. Just began, it is at the beginning of 90 time, it is only inside university and scientific research orgnaization, very few one part user is using search engine. Was 1994 next the issuance of Yahoo catalog, represented those who face common popular to search engine to be born. The amount as the webpage from 1 million break through to one billion four hundred and ten million and sixty-five thousand four hundred and eight level, google and Inktomi begin to appear, the network that arose to be based on the technology such as analysis of index of spider capture, full text, link searchs engine. And future, the times that is search of a socialization. The stationmaster that the content that we should face is a tradition no longer and the content that edit a generation, wait by the rich customer that initiative place keeps the user or uploading photograph however, this will be the new content that search engine should pay close attention to. Socialization search needs compose to build the platform of good community, accumulate and assure the incentive mechanism of quality what have crucial point amount even. On the net, the netizen’s content is created often very active, but very subjective also. What new search service needs to dig the magnanimity in UGC through mechanism and technology is clever.

Below my general comes with two products of Yahoo illustrate the exploration that we search to socialization.

The first example is the intellectual search of Yahoo, it had formed the intellectual network of globalization at present, include to be in chinese mainland, taiwan province, japan, the United States, the market such as South America and Europe, we have a such knowledge to search platform (note: Yahoo knowledge search cries in homeIntellectual hall, cry in English countryAnswers) . Use a such platform, what we can develop global netizen actually is clever. Be in for instance this year August 11, hollywood’s famed movement piece director Wu Yusen searchs the netizen to world each district to ask through Yahoo knowledgeSame a problem: “Why are we always obsessed with the hero in caricature to be very happy with it? ” this problem is released to China, United States, England, Singapore at the same time, argentine, on the website of the Yahoo various places such as Spain. We got the area differs very quickly coming from differring a large number of answers of the netizen of culture setting, be in Yahoo China for instance, we got 3284 answers and 1067 reviews. This example can explain, the mode that a lot of subjective knowledge can search through socialization will get, this is impracticable of traditional search engine.

In addition, return the search experience that can improve statement of knowledge and problem crucial point through UGC. When we are using a webpage to search, after the crux word that inputs a specific type, can return Yahoo knowledge hall inside the netizen’s answer, complement as. Such, search engine can find a result through algorithm not only, also can pass complement these answer side users find contented solution.

The 2nd example is socialization bookmark (Social Bookmarking) . Everybody knows, traditional search engine has a limit, no matter who the user is,be, the result of the search is same. To objective, the crucial point word that is based on a fact, search engine can provide better result commonly, and to subjective, the crucial point word that is based on individual viewpoint, search engine is helpless, also cannot provide the result of high quality commonly, flat perhaps without the result. Our statistic discovers, the user that has 1/3 about inquires crucial point word, contain subjective colour, cannot achieve contented result through traditional search method that is to say. Yahoo rolls outCollect Product, pass netizens to the webpage between is collected and be shared namely, will make up for a tradition to search algorithmic inadequacy. For example, collecting inside search ” Web2.0 ” , discharging those who be in the first is the masses comments on a net, it is be collected by Yahoo user most, reflected netizens’ unanimous view, this and the result that common webpage searchs are disparate.

Sum up the Web2.0 influence to the search, we think to have at 2 o’clock: The first, the knowledge that the user that Web2.0 will offer the high quality that has crucial point amount for traditional search service produces and content; The 2nd, traditional search can pass the knowledge in using UGC and source data, come the improvement of dominance searchs an experience. This will be search engine after surmounting technology of traditional Information Retrieval surmount again, reflected it is with the person this search attempt.

Finally, I share Yahoo to search the understanding of the mission to future with everybody, we are its abbreviate a wordFUSE, english is shirt-sleeve meaning, but the abbreviation that actually it is 4 movements: It is Find above all (find) , we should help people find them to want the information that seek; It is Use next (use) , we should help an user achieve the task in they work or living or goal; It is Share then (share) , help you and friend share knowledge together, perhaps find new friend in share; Finally is Expand (patulous) , use all netizens clever will abound global information knowledge base. Search engine centers in before solving two problems so: Find and use; When Web2.0 times when UGC is more and more important, search engine pays close attention to two problems after solving more, help netizens are shared and expand namely knowledge. (be over)

Adscript:
1, this Wen Yuan stalks of grain to attend the speech that Ai Ruixin searched annual meeting on November 21, because see the error in the manuscript that records through spot stenographer on the net is more and information is not complete, smoke empty rearrange so, the PPT document that deserved to go up to make a speech at that time (
Download link
) .
2, last week 3, below the formidable competition pressure that searchs in Yahoo knowledge, google shut service of his interlocution paying fee, reflected the success that the socialization below Web2.0 searchs from a flank.

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The search of Web2.0 times

Filed under: Yahoo Search — Wrote by Lees on Monday, November 26th, 2007 @ 11:40 pm

Author: Chief inspector of Zhang Qin product

The arrival of Web2.0 times, what can you bring to search engine? I think the most important is to provide a kind of new content source, namely the content that the user creates (User Generated Content, UGC of the following abbreviation) .

The network effect that UGC has a kind of community spy to have (Network Effect) . Be in the United States, the growth of a lot of websites is very rapid, produced this kind of specific effect of community website adequately namely. Network effect is reflected in, the user that should join community is more, contributive content is more, every user gets benefit also is jumped over tall; And, when community user number and content quantity obtain quantity of a crucial point (Critical Mass) after inflection point, website user is counted and the acceleration of several growth meets content to greaten gradually, till final hasten delay.

To search engine, UGC is not a simple card on traditional sense, the customer of a rich that perhaps keeps, it includes two parts content at least: It is socialization media above all (Social Media, the concept that here media is broad sense) , you can upload your photograph, or video of a paragraph of DV. Next, founding this content when the user while, also can all alone to search engine provides a lot of new auxiliary data, the metadata that often says namely (Meta Data) , these metropolises are alled alone by search engine place is used.

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