Posted by Peeyush Ranjan, Engineering Manager and Hong Zhang, Software Engineer

We work hard to keep our search results as fresh as possible so that they reflect the most up to date content on the web. However, given the immense medium the Internet is, it's hard to find all those pages that have just come into existence and make them available when people come looking for the latest information on new topics, whether it's a highly anticipated cell phone launch, news about a popular celebrity or the latest political maneuvers. What makes providing the latest information harder is the small amount of time we have between the page creation and when we'd like to serve those results to you.

Despite these challenges, one thing should not be hard: finding the freshest results on the page. To make it easier for you to spot the newer pages among the search results, we are now going to tell you how long ago we've seen a page containing what we think you're looking for.

For example, if on August 6th you were searching on Google.com for latest financial information following the Friday financial sector action, here's how that result would have looked in the past:



From this you could only see that we crawled this page at a day level granularity. But now when you do this search you will also be able to tell how long ago we noticed this page, so you can quickly pinpoint which of these is results is likely to contain more recent information. Here's the same example showing the annotation that tells you there's something new in the results we've seen recently.



So if you're looking for the most recent content on the web, this change should make it easier to find. And if you're a webmaster looking to tell us about all the new content on your site we haven't looked at yet, check out our support for sitemaps.

想不想知道你的网站在各种操作系统和浏览器下的显示情况？试试Browsershots吧！输入你的网址，等待一定时间，它就会生成你网站在各种浏览器下显示情况的截图。这下子，测试一些网页在特殊浏览器下的兼容性，就不用安装虚拟机了。

Continue reading»»

各位虾米，大家好，报告一个问题。 有虾友反映，这几天发现Blogcn的blog更新停顿了，经我们的大工程师检查发现，blogcn更改了rss服务的地址，原来的地址停止更新了（仍然可用）。但没有给出新的地址，也没有给出重定向信息。 例如这个blog ： http://hanjie33.blogcn.com/index.shtml 原来的地址为： http://www.blogcn.com/rss2/hanjie33.xml 新地址为： http://hanjie33.blogcn.com/rss.xml 原地址已经不更新了，而新地址保持了更新. 我们已经把所有blogcn的地址都修改了，但由于Blogcn切换了Rss服务地址之后，post的地址也变化了。 以前Rss中提供的是这样的地址： http://www.blogcn.com/u2/12/51/hanjie33/blog/59739919.html 新的地址是这样的： http://hanjie33.blogcn.com/diary,112738006.shtml 文章是一样的，但URL不同，因此短期内会导致文章重复，还请大家见谅。 明天就是周五了，提前祝大家周末愉快啊

Posted by Bill Weihl, Green Energy Czar

Reducing climate change by saving energy is an important effort we should all join, and that's why we're very glad to see the innovative thinking going into a variety of solutions. One idea, suggested by the site called "Blackle" (which is not related to Google, by the way, though the site does use our custom search engine), is to reduce energy used by monitors by providing search with a black background. We applaud the spirit of the idea, but our own analysis as well as that of others shows that making the Google homepage black will not reduce energy consumption. To the contrary, on flat-panel monitors (already estimated to be 75% of the market), displaying black may actually increase energy usage. Detailed results from a new study confirm this.

As computers become a bigger part of more people's lives, they will consume an increasing amount of energy, which is why we've invested so much in making our data centers efficient and we've joined with others to launch Climate Savers Computing, which has a goal of reducing total power consumption by more than 50% for all computers by 2010.

There are some things you can do now to reduce the energy used by your computer, such as:

• turn on the power management features. Virtually all computers today have the ability to switch into low-power modes automatically when they're idle; very few computers have this capability enabled! Here's how to do it on computers running Windows XP.

• turn off your monitor and computer when you're not using them

• turn down the brightness on your monitor

• make sure your next computer meets the efficiency standards of Climate Savers Computing (an efficient computer uses up to 50% less energy than a conventional one)

• to find the most efficient PCs available today, look for the words "EnergyStar 4.0 compliant."

刊于同日的《21世纪经济报道》，原文标题是：肆无忌惮：人们开始吞咽自以为丰饶的苦果 这回，轮到具有118年历史的《华尔街日报》为它坚定不移地讴歌公司自由主义殉道了：它由于默多克...

infosthetics was (& probably will be in the near future) somewhat less active, due to the recent arrival of Arno, my newborn son.

his aesthetic (& still intuitively understandable) visualization of love, hunger & happiness, the result of a few hundred thousands of years of harsh infosthetic "usability testing", deserves all attention.

in the meantime, see baby stroller maps & baby diaper tracking & baby conveyer & baby name voyager.

a brilliant dynamic billboard idea, created by WWF Canada, using an awning to cast a shadow, representing rising ocean levels, addressing the current issue of climate change.

[link: youtube.com & wwf.ca|via migurski]

Posted by Susan Taing, Associate Product Marketing Manager

Checkout stores are offering up to $20 in savings for the back-to-school season. Find out more on the Checkout blog.

在遥远的爱笛费思星球上，球王sukye正在草稿纸上紧张的计算着。

该什么时候向地球发送求救信号呢？

近来，爱笛费思星球蓝藻泛滥猪肉涨价一发不可收拾纸馅包子打狗
狗不理。在这存亡的危急关头，球王sukye决定咨询地球上的专家。
可是所有设备只剩下一只一次性的2200秒信号发射器了。幸运的是，
一爱笛费思天相当于一地球年，球王sukye可以自由的寻找地球上
一年中最佳的接收时机。

理想图是，当信号到达地球某地时，信号方向同时穿过地心和太阳。
这样，当地时间是午夜，太阳的干扰最小；信号来自当地天顶，大气
的影响也最小。

而一年中，这样的机会只有一次！

为了做计算，球王sukye暂时的想象自己在以地球为中心的天球坐标系
中。不用考虑地球的自转，把她(Gaia)当作一个质点；天体都用中心
投影的方式投射到以地球为球心的球面上。天球的半径是无所谓的，
因为天体离地球的距离不在此时关心。大多数遥远的天体相对球面的
切向运动都非常的慢（离汽车越远越觉得他Lightning McQueen动得慢
吧），在一段时间内可以当作静止的，也可以看作固定在天球的框架上；
而太阳系内的天体，就在这个球面上肆意徜徉。少数遥远的天体也会动
的很快，往往他们的附近就有一个大质量黑洞。

好了，天体都呆到球面上去了，让我们用经度、纬度来描述吧。在春分
的那一天，当太阳在地球的零经度－本初子午线正上方，把地球上的经线、
纬线投射到天球上，就得到了天体的赤经、赤纬。有点不同的是，不再
区分东经西经（不是东京西京，我爱北京南京），而是简单取满360度。
比如我大爱笛费思星球，就是（53.1617，-27.8316）（赤纬北为正，
南为负）。

善良的地球的人们发现，把赤经分为24小时会更方便。这样每小时相当于
15度。再细分分钟、秒，并类推到赤纬的小数部分。这样，我大爱笛费
思星球的天球坐标，也是(03h 32m 38.80s, -27d 49m 53.7s)
，或者简写成（03 32 38.80, -27 49 53.7）。

太阳呢？春分的时候按定义是在0h，一年转地球一圈，所以每3月增加6h，
也就是90度。

终于，让我们用钟来表示赤经，不过一圈是24小时。多数遥远天体就呆在
某处不动，比如我大爱笛费思星球就在3点半方向。而太阳每年就顺时钟慢
跑一圈。当它转到15点半方向的时候，就是球王sukye要找的最佳时机。
这一天大概是在秋分和冬至的中间，11月2日左右，恰是球王sukye的地球
生日。

最佳观测地呢？我大爱笛费思星球赤纬-27d，那就在地球上南纬27度接收
好了。嗨，智利，你准备好了么？

附记
有个软件叫starry night backyard狠好使，比google earth好玩多了。有
个论坛叫http://www.astronomy.com.cn，也狠酷。

一般情况下，像牛奶、颜料这种不透明的物质只会散射光。但荷兰的研究人员却用一非透明介质把光聚焦了（只对相干光有效）。他们通过一空间相位调制器，对光束截面的相位分布进行雕琢，来实现的这个魔术。via: Physics News Update

解释起来不容易，看他们网站上的说明和动画演示，就比较容易理解一点。

（题外话：觉得 Lens 翻译成透镜不大好。透不是 Lens 的关键，镜又通常给人反射镜的形象。）

Posted by Peter Fleischer, Global Privacy Counsel

Cookies, IP addresses, logs -- all of these are important things to understand in the context of online privacy. We try to explain them in clear and simple language in our privacy policy and FAQ. But they're not always easy for non-techies to understand. Google is committed to being transparent about our privacy practices. We've been thinking about different ways to help people understand the technical aspects of online privacy, to improve transparency, and to empower you to make informed decisions about how you want to use our services. Today, we're launching our first experiment to explain basic privacy concepts via video on YouTube. Here it is:

This video runs about 5 minutes, so we couldn’t cover everything. Over time, we hope to create additional videos where we talk about other privacy issues: what data do we collect when you register for a Google Account? or - when you search on Google while you’re logged in? or - why does Google keep server logs? But before we head down the road of sequels, we’d like to get your feedback on whether you find this video format helpful. So please watch it and tell us what you think. We look forward to hearing from you.

在豆瓣建了个格志小组，在豆瓣玩的朋友们一定要支持一下呀。：）

相比格志，更习惯于豆瓣界面的朋友，可以在那里交流。

有时间的时候，我会就这个视频写一篇blog： Web 3.0 will be “applications that are pieced together” - with the characteristics that the apps are relatively small, the data is in the cloud, the apps can run on any device (PC or...