Official Tech News

What’s your X? Amplifying technology moonshots

2012-02-07T02:10:35Z

Last week, we ran an experiment. We hosted a gathering, called “Solve for X,” for experienced entrepreneurs, innovators and scientists from around the world. The event focused on proposing and discussing technological solutions to some of the world’s greatest problems. Discussions began last week with this small event, and now we invite others to join the conversation on our website and our Google +page.

The Solve for X gathering, which we co-hosted with Eric Schmidt, is a place to celebrate a concept we champion internally and that we believe will inspire many others: technology moonshots. These are efforts that take on global-scale problems, define radical solutions to those problems, and involve some form of breakthrough technology that could actually make them happen. Moonshots live in the gray area between audacious projects and pure science fiction; they are 10x improvement, not 10%. That’s partly what makes them so exciting.

Moonshots can come from anywhere—people of all ages and places, companies, academia, inspired experts, enthusiastic newcomers, and often from accidental discoveries. Take this Solve for X talk by Adrien Treuille, a professor of computer science and robotics at Carnegie Mellon University. He proposes that going forward significant science and technological advances will come from individual contributors—independent of their official affiliations or training. It sounds implausible, but he makes the case by discussing EteRNA and Foldit, scientific discovery games where individual gamers are lapping the best computer programs in DNA folding and RNA nano-fabrication problems. Rob McGinnis, co-founder of Oasys, suggests in his Solve for X talk that fresh water could be produced everywhere in the world at less than one-tenth the energy input or cost to the environment of what’s possible today. It sounds too good to be true because the world needs fresh water so very desperately, yet Rob is exploring dramatic technological breakthroughs in desalination to make this moonshot into a possible reality.

You can watch these videos and others on our site now, and we will add more in the coming week. Just wait to hear Mary Lou Jepsen’s Solve for X talk on how it may literally be possible to take pictures of the mind’s eye! The potential impact of this technology on the way we communicate, preserve memories and understand ourselves is staggering. Or consider Daphne Preuss, a leading geneticist who moved from academia to pursue plant genetics in order to help make the planet healthier and find ways to feed more people. She doesn’t plan to take on her moonshot herself, but she has a strong vision for what it would take to get it done and why it’s so important.

Our gathering last week brought together a group that is already practiced at moonshot thinking to propose specific solutions. At least a few times a year, we hope that people will take a few hours or a day or two out of their busy schedules to dare to push the boundaries, and to consider moonshot approaches to some of the world’s many unresolved challenges. Solve for X isn’t about developing a new business line or building an investment portfolio. Rather, it aims to be a forum where technology-based moonshot thinking is practiced, celebrated and amplified. We invite you to come collaborate with us at www.wesolveforx.com.

Posted by Astro Teller & Megan Smith, co-hosts of Solve for X

Supporting U.S. student veterans with a new scholarship

2012-02-06T23:03:07Z

The newest addition to the Google scholarships family is the Google Student Veterans of America (SVA) Scholarship. We’re partnering with the nonprofit Student Veterans of America (SVA) to support their mission of providing veterans with the resources, support and advocacy they need to succeed in higher education and throughout their careers. The Google SVA Scholarship is available to student veterans who are pursuing degrees in computer science and related fields in the U.S. for the 2012-2013 academic year. In addition to the financial award, recipients will be invited to attend the annual all-expenses-paid scholars’ retreat at the Googleplex in Mountain View, Calif. in the summer of 2012.

We have a long history of helping university students pursue computer science education with scholarship and internship opportunities. Since our first scholarships were awarded in 2004, we’ve provided over $8.8 million dollars of financial support to 2,100 students from historically underrepresented groups worldwide. Our academic scholarship programs are just one part of our global effort to increase the diversity of the technology industry and invest in the next generation of computer scientists. This mission includes ensuring that student veterans in the U.S. have the support they need to pursue technology education and careers.

Google’s commitment to military veterans extends beyond our educational outreach efforts. The Google Veterans Network, one of our 18 employee groups dedicated to supporting diversity and inclusion at Google, fosters a community of support for our military veterans, reservists, guardsmen, family members and friends. In 2011, we introduced a customized job search engine called the Veterans Job Bank in partnership with the Department of Veterans Affairs. Members of our veterans’ community also partnered with the Google Creative Lab to launch Chrome for Wounded, Ill and Injured Warriors and to create Google for Veterans and Families, a new online resource that brings together our free products and platforms for service members and their families. As a Google engineer and a Marine veteran, I’m proud of our commitment to diversity and of our efforts to bring other veterans into the world of technology and computer science.

The deadline to apply for the Google SVA Scholarship is March 15, 2012.

For complete scholarship details, visit our scholarship programs page.

Posted by Dan Cross, Software Engineer

(Cross-posted from the Google Student blog)

Post-Bowl Twitter analysis

2012-02-06T21:49:04Z

The results are in: People love to share the experience of watching the Super Bowl with millions of other viewers from around the world. Whether it’s cheering for your team, commenting on the halftime show or discussing the ads, it seems you have a lot to say about this annual tradition—and you’re using Twitter to say it.

Here’s a fun fact: in 2008, Twitter’s largest spike in Tweets per second (TPS) during the Super Bowl was just 27. Three years later, fans sent 4,064 TPS, which was the highest TPS for any sporting event at that time.

This year, the TPS peak was 12,233 Tweets. The spike took place in the final three minutes of the game, during which fans sent an average of 10,000 TPS. Madonna’s performance during halftime was a big hit, too—there was an average of 8,000 TPS sustained during her performance, with a peak of 10,245 Tweets.

In the image above, you can see a few more data points from last night, including how some of the hashtags performed that were displayed on-air in the ads. If you missed any of those ads, head to adscrimmage.twitter.com to check them out and vote for your favorite via Tweet.

Hashtags in Orkut communities

2012-02-06T20:36:27Z

Our team continues working hard to improve Orkut communities, and today we are introducing a new feature: support for hashtags.

From now on, whenever you’re reading a topic, all hashtags will be automatically highlighted and will link to our improved search page, where other posts with the same tag will show up. To create a hashtag, just type # before the hashtag (no spaces allowed), for instance if you post a new topic or a reply and write #hashtagsonorkut, this hashtag will be automatically highlighted. We hope that this gives you a new way of exploring all the content in our communities and that this lets you find what you want more easily.

For now, new hashtags take around one day to show up in search results. We will keep you updated as we continue improving this.

Try it and tell us what you think. Just use #hashtagsonorkut on your new topics and replies in any community!

Posted by Marco Wisniewski, Google Engineer

Pop Music Maven Arjan Writes Joins #BingIt to Discuss the GRAMMYs

2012-02-06T18:13:00Z

Arjan Writes is the man behind the renowned www.ArjanWrites.com blog, which Forbes named “Best of Blog” for music in 2007, is an authority on emerging acts and cutting-edge new pop music. Arjan is also an official Community Blogger for GRAMMY.com, covering all major GRAMMY events throughout GRAMMY Week. With the GRAMMYs just around the corner we invited Arjan to share his GRAMMY predictions with you live via twitter.

This week, you have a chance to get Arjan’s inside perspective first hand. He will be our guest on this week’s #BingIt chat where he will share his GRAMMY predictions. Join us Wednesday, February 8th from 12-1 p.m. PT to tweet directly with Arjan and the #BingIt crew. To participate, follow @Bing and @arjanwrites and tweet out your questions and commentary with the hashtag #BingIt. As an added bonus, we’ll be giving away two $50 gift cards.

The 54^th annual GRAMMY Awards will air this upcoming Sunday, February 12 at 8 p.m. PT on CBS live from The Staples Center.

Need to catch up on your favorite acts ahead of the Grammy’s? Bing has you covered. Use Bing Entertainment to search nominees so you don’t miss a beat the night of the awards.

- The #BingIt Team

Kari Dilloo – @karidilloo
Ted Roduner – @roduner
Tanya Wang – @wangtanya

Super Bowl XLVI: Mobile, Manning and Madonna

2012-02-06T14:35:24Z

Now that the final Super Bowl touchdown has been scored, the dip bowl wiped clean and the last of the chicken wings devoured, we’re taking a look at some game-day search trends to see what football fans were searching for this year.

As the Giants and Patriots battled it out on the field yesterday, U.S. viewers multi-tasked, watching the game on television and also going online more than ever before, turning to their smartphones and tablets to look up players, halftime show performers and their favorite Super Bowl commercials. In fact, around 41% of searches related to [Super Bowl ads] that were made during the game came from mobile devices, up from 25% for the same time the day prior.

Overall, the top trending searches on Google during the game were:

Madonna
Halftime show
Patriots
Tom Brady
Giants

This was the first year that the Super Bowl was live streamed, and there was a significant spike in searches related to Super Bowl live streaming on game day. Searches peaked at kickoff, and were made predominantly on desktop, followed by mobile phones and then tablets. Searches for the Spanish language version of the live stream made the list of top trending queries, and while it may have have been after midnight on the other side of the Atlantic, we still saw searches for [Super Bowl 2012 übertragung] and [w9 streaming] in Germany and France, respectively.

The Giants claimed the game in a down-to-the-wire nail biter; however, the Patriots edged them out in searches. Patriots quarterback Tom Brady not only broke Joe Montana’s record for the most touchdown passes at a Super Bowl, he also scored the most searches out of all the players. Eli Manning, Victor Cruz, Aaron Hernandez and Danny Woodhead rounded out the top five players trending during the game.

The Material Girl Madonna took the honor of being the most-searched for term during the game, but other celebrities that caught viewers’ eyes included Super Bowl performers LMFAO, Kelly Clarkson and Nicki Minaj. Searches for Katherine McPhee’s soon-to-premiere NBC show [Smash] beat out searches for David Beckham’s H&M ad campaign.

Finally, no Super Bowl wrap-up would be complete without talking about the commercials. 2012 saw a pre-Super Bowl ad bonanza, with many of the top commercials either being teased or posted in full well in advance of the game. Super Bowl ads or ad teasers were watched more than 30 million times on YouTube before the big weekend this year (you can read more on the top rising Super Bowl searches on YouTube here).

Game day searches for [super bowl ads] were 122 times higher than the same time last week. The most popular commercials in terms of Google searches were ads from Acura, GoDaddy and M&M’s. Searches for The Avengers movie trailer were also trending, along with Chrysler’s spot featuring Clint Eastwood.

Now that you’ve seen them all, vote for your favorite commercial of the game on the YouTube Ad Blitz channel. The winning ads will be showcased on the YouTube homepage on February 18.

To download the full infographic above, visit Think Insights, our website for marketers. Our final Ad Blitz infographic (coming soon) will include new facts and stats about Super Bowl ads, and you can follow Think with Google on Google+ to be the first to know when it’s released.

That’s it for the NFL 2012 season, but luckily, major league baseball is just around the corner…

Posted by Jeffrey Oldham, Software Engineer

Blogger Buzz 2012-02-05 22:52:05

2012-02-06T03:52:05Z

Update on Kelihos Botnet and New Related Malware

2012-02-03T22:07:00Z

There have been some recent confusing reports regarding whether the Kelihos botnet, which Microsoft partnered with Kyrus Tech Inc. and Kaspersky Lab to take down in September 2011, has been resurrected.

Contrary to some reports, Kaspersky and Microsoft have no evidence that the botnet that was taken down in September has returned to the control of cybercriminals or is spamming again at this time. However, we have seen evidence of distribution of new malware that appears to be a slightly updated variant of the malware that built the original Kelihos botnet. This does not mean that the Kelihos botnet we took down is back in operation, but that a new version of Kelihos malware known as “Backdoor:Win32/Kelihos.B” is being used to create a new botnet. Microsoft has already made protection from this new malware variant available in the Malicious Software Removal Tool (MSRT). This kind of effort by botherders to try to rebuild a botnet from the ashes of the old is not new.

In fact, it is believed that Kelihos itself may have been built based at least in part on code from Waledac, the first botnet Microsoft took down. Malware authors often recycle previous versions of malware. The challenge for the ‘good guys’ is to stay on top of such emerging threats and continue to build protections for computer owners and strategies for further cybercrime disruption. This is why taking down a single threat has never been Microsoft’s ultimate goal in our fight against botnets, but rather to transform the fight against cybercrime by developing, testing and advancing impactful and disruptive strategies that can help the industry as a whole better fight those that attack our customers. This is a long term effort and, despite the constant evolution of cybercrime, we’ve seen strong positive progress in recent years.

Confusing media reports about the status of the botnet developed this week following a post from Kaspersky Labs that new samples of malware, built on code that is very similar to that used by Kelihos, had been detected. However, analysis of these samples and continuing observations of Kelihos-infected computers have demonstrated no known re-employment of the original Kelihos botnet by botherders. Microsoft took down the Kelihos botnet in partnership with Kyrus Tech, which served as a declarant in the legal case that made this takedown possible, and Kaspersky Lab researchers, who provided technical analysis to help dismantle the botnet.

Microsoft’s role in this operation was in coordinating the overall takedown, investigation and legal case, taking down the command and control (C&C) and backup domains associated with the botnet’s operations and working to make sure affected computer owners could clean the malware from their computers. Kaspersky’s role, as outlined previously by its researchers, included peer-to-peer disruption and sinkholing the botnet – a process that reroutes all botnet traffic toward Kaspersky-controlled machines, or “nodes,” and away from the network of infected machines. Kaspersky has reported no loss of control of the peer-to-peer operations and Microsoft researchers have confirmed this week that the original Kelihos C&C and backup infrastructure remains down, but it appears new botnet infrastructure may be being built with the new variant of Kelihos malware.

In terms of the scope of the threat this represents, it is worth noting that the size of the original Kelihos botnet taken down was relatively small. At the time of the takedown, the Kelihos botnet was estimated to include approximately 41,000 infected computers worldwide. Of course, botnet malware continues to spread and need cleaning over time, so the overall size of a particular botnet might fluctuate.

However, since the time of the takedown, we know MSRT alone has cleaned nearly 28,000 infected computers. Based on Kaspersky’s analysis this week, they estimate that the size of the botnet has gone down by approximately 25 percent in just the last two months. Since the time of the original takedown in September, we estimate that the botnet is less than a quarter of the size it was and now involves less than 10,000 infected computers. We have no statistics to share at this time with respect to the size of the new botnet in development, but while those numbers are likely small as well, it is a threat we will continue to monitor. We are also continuing our efforts to clean the computers that are infected with all known forms of Kelihos malware, including this new variant.

Fighting cybercrime, including botnets, requires a collaborative effort among industry, academia and the public sector, and as we learn more about the status of the Kelihos malware, we will apply those lessons to future takedowns. To date, our collaborative approach has produced key victories, including the previous takedowns of Waledac and Rustock botnets. Again, no single action or takedown will put an end to malware or cybercrime, but through continued cooperation, creativity and vigilance we can help prevent and disrupt it.

Microsoft, as ever, remains committed to following botnet cases wherever they lead us and to holding those responsible accountable for their actions. As you may have seen, Microsoft recently named a new defendant in the legal case on Kelihos and we continue to move forward with those legal proceedings. We will continue to provide updates as the ongoing Kelihos investigation unfolds.

For free tools and information to remove Kelihos or other botnet malware from your computer, go to http://support.microsoft.com/botnets. And, to stay up to date on the latest developments on the fight against cybercrime, follow the Microsoft Digital Crimes Unit on Facebook and Twitter.

Posted by Richard Domingues Boscovich
Senior Attorney, Microsoft Digital Crimes Unit

Upgrade Your Life: Tips and Tricks for Managing Your Email

2012-02-03T20:55:41Z

Check out the latest episode of Upgrade Your Life on Yahoo! News where you can get the latest tips and tricks for managing your emails! Learn about how best to protect yourself from spam and bacn, unsubscribe from mailing lists, track all of your online purchase receipts, keyboard shortcuts in Yahoo! Mail and much, much more!

Upgrade Your Life: Tips and Tricks for Managing Your Email

2012-02-03T20:55:41Z